"This book describes the population health concerns of small-town America and how these concerns are affected by the unique characteristics of these places focusing on the built environment"--

Based on worldwide public health data, this report lays out the premise for building healthy places and illuminates the role of the real estate and development community in addressing public health issues. This is an essential resource for public officials, real estate developers, engineers, consultants, and students of urban planning.

Throughout much of its history, the United States was predominantly a rural society. The need to provide sustenance resulted in many people settling in areas where food could be raised for their families. Over the past century, however, a quiet shift from a rural to an urban society occurred, such that by 1920, for the first time, more members of our society lived in urban regions than in rural ones. This was made possible by changing agricultural practices. No longer must individuals raise their own food, and the number of person-hours and acreage required to produce food has steadily been decreasing because of technological advances, according to Roundtable member James Merchant of the University of Iowa. The Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Environmental Health Science, Research, and Medicine held a regional workshop at the University of Iowa on November 29 and 30, 2004, to look at rural environmental health issues. Iowa, with its expanse of rural land area, growing agribusiness, aging population, and increasing immigrant population, provided an opportunity to explore environmental health in a region of the country that is not as densely populated. As many workshop participants agreed, the shifting agricultural practices as the country progresses from family operations to large-scale corporate farms will have impacts on environmental health. This report describes and summarizes the participants' presentations to the Roundtable members and the discussions that the members had with the presenters and participants at the workshop.

Foundations of Rural Public Health in America spans a wide variety of important issues affecting rural public health, including consumer and family health, environmental and occupational health, mental health, substance abuse, disease prevention and control, rural health care delivery systems, and health disparities. Divided into five sections, the book covers understanding rural communities, public health systems and policies for rural communities, health disparities in rural communities and among special populations, and advancing rural health including assessment, planning and intervention. Written by a multidisciplinary team of experienced scholars and practitioners, this authoritative text comprehensively covers rural health issues today.

THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH The Built Environment and Public Health explores the impact on our health of the environments we build for ourselves, and how public health and urban planning can work together to build settings that promote healthy living. This comprehensive text covers origins and foundations of the built environment as a public health focus and its joint history with urban planning, transportation and land use, infrastructure and natural disasters, assessment tools, indoor air quality, water quality, food security, health disparities, mental health, social capital, and environmental justice. The Built Environment and Public Health explores such timely issues as Basics of the built environment and evidence for its influences How urban planning and public health intersect How infrastructure improvements can address chronic diseases and conditions Meeting the challenges of natural disasters Policies to promote walking and mass transit Approaches to assess and improve air quality and our water supply Policies that improve food security and change how Americans get their food How the built environment can address needs of vulnerable populations Evidence-based design practices for hospitals and health care facilities Mental health, stressors, and health care environments Theories and programs to improve social capital of low-income communities How the built environment addresses issues of health equity and environmental justice This important textbook and resource includes chapter learning objectives, summaries, questions for discussion, and listings of key terms. Companion Web site: www.josseybass.com/go/lopez

This historical study looks at how reformers have used urban planning and architecture to improve the health of urban residents of the United States. It begins in the nineteenth century, when problems in rapidly urbanizing cities threatened to overwhelm cities, and then traces the development and impact of reform movements up through the First World War, including discussions of model tenements, the 'city beautiful' movement, tenement laws, and zoning and building codes. Midcentury design movements, such as new efforts to plan suburbs and Modernism, along with outlines of the impacts of public housing, highway building, and urban renewal, are the focus of the middle chapters of the book. The final third examines the revival of cities and the reconnection of public health with urban planning that occurred as the twentieth century ended.

'Urban Sprawl and Public Health' offers a survey of the impact that the built environment can have on the health of the people who inhabit our cities. The authors go on to suggest ways in which the design of cities could be improved & have a positive impact on the well-being of their citizens.