Effective integration of health into urban spatial planning through spatial plans and impact assessment methods

Carmichael, Laurence

Abstract

Background The paper will report on a recent series of 3 reviews carried out for NICE in 2010 and identifying barriers that impede the full integration of health into development planning, and facilitators that enable or promote that integration.

Aim the aim is twofold: i) to identify the extent to which health and wellbeing are incorporated into the policies of British local authority spatial plans and compare across cases ii) to identify which impact assessment methods such as health impact, environmental impact or strategic environment impact assessments can facilitate the integration of health considerations into spatial plans and projects and why.

Methods i) a purposive non-random sampling approach identifying ten local authorities and reviewing their spatial plans; ii) a systematic review of literature followed an actor centred governance and policy analysis

Results First, the results highlight the varying degrees to which spatial plans explicitly consider five health issues (physical activity, mental wellbeing, environmental health, unintentional injury, health equality). Only two of the ten local authorities reviewed demonstrated an explicit link between health issues and planning policy. Second, we were able to identify which impact assessment methods allowed the consideration of health issues in planning decisions and further identified the factors facilitating that process.

Conclusions The results also allowed us to draw some conclusions on the governance and policy processes towards a more effective integration of health into development planning. The key conclusion from the case studies is that it is not primarily the planning system that inhibits health-integrated plans and projects, but engagement between health and planning professionals over the years facilitate the process. The literature review further identified that knowledge sharing, partnership working, targeting resources and synchronising impact assessments with planning processes can improve the effectiveness of impact assessment in integrating health considerations into planning decisions.

Citation

Carmichael, L. (2011, February). Effective integration of health into urban spatial planning through spatial plans and impact assessment methods. Paper presented at South West Public Health Scientific Conference 2011, Weston Super Mare, UK

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: South West Public Health Scientific Conference 2011
• Conference Location: Weston Super Mare, UK
• Start Date: Feb 2, 2011
• End Date: Feb 2, 2011
• Publication Date: Feb 2, 2011
• Deposit Date: Dec 8, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 29, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: health, planning, local plans, HIA, impact assessments
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/965332
• Publisher URL: http://www.swpho.nhs.uk/resource/browse.aspx?RID=76132