This course is designed to provide an understanding on how the built environment impacts health both positively and negatively. The advancement of the field of built environment contains elements that are strongly positive for both current and future health, all successes contain within them dangers and the seeds for failure. A genuine danger is that health issues may become the next mere design fad, and just as new buildings and developments are being “greenwashed”, so “healthwashing” may erode substantive improvements to health and the built environment. While the future of BEH efforts will succeed or fail depending on the cogency of data and clarity of the messaging by future practitioners of public health, urban planning, architecture, business, law and related fields.
- Teacher: Richard Nair