Sample Syllabi
Syllabi + Descriptions
Abbreviated descriptions of previously offered courses in this area are listed below. Full syllabi for these courses are availble at the end of each description. They include syllabi from the following schools:
- Boston University
- Portland State University (**NEW ADDITION**)
- University of California, Berkeley
- University of Illinois at Chicago
- University of Manitoba (**NEW ADDITION**)
- University of Texas, Austin
- University of Virginia (3 credit) (1 credit)
- University of Louisville
Other schools now offering a built environment and public health course include:
- Cornell University Department of Design and Environmental Analysis
- Columbia Mailman School of Public Health
- University of West Florida School of Allied Health and Life Sciences
- University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning
- Virginia Polytechnic Institute Department of Urban Affairs and Planning
- Ohio State University City and Regional Planning Program
Below are a list of schools that offer a course with a particular focus within the built environment and health nexus.
- University of Louisville (**NEW ADDITION**)
- University of British Columbia (**NEW ADDITION**)
Note, those who would like to add their school to this list of built environment and public health curriculum offerings should submit that information here.
Syllabi + Descriptions
Boston University, School of Public Health, The Built Environment: Design Solutions for Public Health (4 credits), Russell Lopez DSc MCRP
This course provides an overview of urban planning to public health students and introduces public health concepts to urban planners. At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to:
- Explain the rationale behind historical and current theories on the relationship between the built environment and public health
- Identify contemporary features of the built environment such as parks, public works projects, single family homes, apartment buildings, transportation systems and highways, etc., that reflect past efforts to influence health.
- Critique historic patterns of development and assess the health consequences of contemporary urban forms.
- Evaluate the evidence for the built environment–health link.
- Explain the role of the built environment in the context of other factors that influence health.
- Understand how the built environment might influence other efforts to protect and promote health.
- Utilize studies and methodologies developed by sociologists, anthropologists, urban planners and architects to evaluate the health impacts of the built environment.
- Propose built environment-based interventions, based on current evidence and the lessons learned from the past studies of the built environment, to promote public health.
- Develop and implement new programs and policies that utilize built environment and design to promote public health.
UC Berkeley, School of Public Health, Built Environment and Health (3 credits), Richard Jackson, MD MPH
An interdisciplinary Course on the Built Environment and Health: Breaking down the Silos. The US and other developed, as well as developing countries, are facing increasingly lethal and costly epidemics of acute and chronic diseases related to land use and built environment decisions. While the hazards presented by air and water pollution are well recognized for acute, infectious and toxicological illnesses, there is only now increasing recognition of the hazards presented by building and community designs that fail to recognize human health. Land use and built environment decisions impact every age group, social and racial minority. These impacts range from the very acute (motor vehicle trauma) to the long term (obesity, cancer, heart disease). These decisions have as their bases economic, financial, insurance, housing and other factors. Participants in the sessions would analyze each of these factors and related disease endpoints.
UIC, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, Planning for Healthy Cities (3 credits), Curtis Winkle, PhD
This course explores the changing role of health in planning, the ecology of risk in urban areas, prescriptions for healthy urban design, the needs of special populations in the city, community health planning, and an overview of some major policy issues affecting urban health.
UT Austin, Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, The Built Environment and Public Health (3 credits), Tracey McMillan, PhD
This course is intended to promote an interdisciplinary learning environment to examine the relationship between the built environment and public health issues/outcomes using the social ecological model. Despite the long history and daily interplay these areas have with one another, they are traditionally taught and practiced with little coordination. Issues related to transportation, land use, urban design, architecture, community development, environmental policy, health promotion and disease prevention are discussed, with examples covering how and why these elements should be considered part of the process and the outcome of public decision-making.
UVA, Schools of Architecture and Medicine, Healthy Communities Seminar (3 credits), Professor Nisha Botchwey, PhD MCP
The Healthy Communities Seminar is an elective planning course that explores the interconnections between the fields of planning and public health. These fields emerged together with the common goal of preventing outbreaks of infectious disease. Since that time, the two disciplines have diverged in their focus; public health following a clinical model and planning focusing on urban design and physical form. However, as the intimate connections between the built environment and disease continue to be revealed, the planning and public health fields are reconnecting once again. This course begins with an evaluation of the respective histories of the planning and public health fields through to the present. Subsequent discussions include analysis of: (1) the natural environment (air, water, food), (2) manmade environment (sprawl, sidewalks, schools, parks, traffic and cul-de-sacs) and resultant physical activity and injury, (3) mental health and relationships (social capital, parish nursing, neighborhood context), (4) health disparities (children, elderly, minorities, environmental justice), and (5) health, policy and ethics (sustainable planning and consumption patterns, housing, social policy, EIAs and HIAs, individual rights versus population health).
UVA, Schools of Architecture and Medicine, Built Environment and Community Health (1 credit), Professor Nisha Botchwey, PhD MCP
The Built Environment & Community Health Course is an interdisciplinary Public Health and Planning Health course that explores the connections between the built environment and community health. Faculty members from across the University with expertise in public health, medicine, urban planning, engineering, education and economics will lead sessions that address current built environment and community health topics in partnership with local community leaders. Discussion topics will include physical activity promotion, mobility, transportation safety, land use, school health, health disparities, mental health, and chronic disease prevention.
University of Louisville, School of Public Health and Information Sciences, Urban Systems and Public Health (3 credits), Susan Olson Allen, PhD
This course explores the relationship between the built environment and its influence on a community’s health. It is thus interdisciplinary in its approach, touching especially on the fields of public health and urban planning. Despite the fact that historically the two fields were considered one, today they are practiced in nearly total exclusivity. This seminar will examine such issues as theories and concepts of behavior and design, health disparities, social capital, physical activity, and air, water and transportation.
University of Louisville, Psychology and Brain Sciences, Body and Health II: The Community (3 credits), Paul Salmon, PhD
The major purpose of this course is to study the topic of health and wellness in the context of the broader community. We will do this by developing a preliminary visionary plan for a Community Wellness Center that will integrate the University of Louisville's Belknap Campus with the surrounding community. The proposed center will serve as an anchor point for facilities, programs, and research on health and wellness conducted by University staff, faculty, and students. The center will serve as a Wellness Center for a diverse population of children and adults drawn from the surrounding neighborhood(s), many of whom have been designated as underserved populations with elevated health risk levels. The Center will offer a diverse range of fitness, health, and wellness facilities, as well as community-oriented health programs, classes, and other resources.
Portland State University, Urban Studies & Planning - Urban & Public Affairs, Healthy People/Healthy Places (3 credits), Ellen Shoshkes, PhD
The The aim of this sophomore inquiry is to provide an understanding of this ecological concept of health as a dynamic process of adaptation to a constantly changing environment. Students will examine the relationship between how we live our lives and the economic, social and physical environments that surround us. A term-long community-based project provides an opportunity for hands-on experience with the subject matter. Students will develop skills to study characteristics of the built environment that may influence health and apply lessons from urban planning and public health research to current and future problems.
*This course is the "gateway" to an undergrad cluster on Healthy People Healthy Places here at PSU - part of the University Studies program.
University of British Columbia, School of Community and Regional Planning, Public Health and the Built Environment (3 credits), Lawrence Frank, PhD
Taken collectively, the recent emergence of an obesity pandemic, increasing awareness of the environmental destruction associated with auto dependence, and increasing energy costs collectively suggest that investments in non-motorized transportation may soon emerge as a form of win – win public policy. At a time when Canadian and U.S. federal mandates are calling for reductions in air pollution associated with vehicular travel, currently dominant approaches to designing urban environments often serve to inhibit non-motorized travel.
This class is set within this socio-political backdrop, students will learn about the role of non-motorized transportation as a tool for the improvement of personal and environmental health. This class will familiarize students with factors that impact the choice to walk and bike and how to apply findings from research to specific transportation planning and programming (investment) processes and projects.
University of Manitoba, Faculty of Architecture Environmental Design Program, Landscape and Urbanism (L+U) Special Topics in Community Design: Health and Community Design (3 credits), Sheri Blake, PhD
A healthy community is not determined simply by high health status, but by a community that “continually strives to be healthier in all decisions it makes” related to peace, shelter, facilities and services, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice and equity. The emphasis in this course is on social justice and equity in health and community design, recognizing we often approach issues based on the environment in which we were raised, ignoring many other lifestyles, circumstances, experiences, cultures and approaches to the environment and economy in planning/design decision-making processes. The course begins with a brief history of the relationship between the built environment and health. The course covers built environment issues related to active living, age-friendly cities, food security, housing and health, universal design, therapeutic landscapes, environmental racism and justice, integral planning, planning in contested cities, among others. The course should provide students with a broader range of knowledge from which to apply planning/design decision-making in the future.