Transportation and Health Resource Hub - Equity
Universal design guide book 
This document provides guidance regarding universal design for affordable housing. Developed with Regional investment partners and funders, the authors worked collectively with a local affordable housing developer to first define and secondly create "universal design" by applying the guide book principles to new development in the Portland Metro area. The guidelines address a full range of affordable housing topics and demonstrates how to apply them.
Transportation research circular E-C239, arterial roadways research needs and concerns: Informing the planning, design, and operation of arterial roadways considering public health
Arterial roads provide regional and local access to diverse economic and cultural resources that can positively influence community health. At the same time, arterial roads have been linked to various types of cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, poor birth outcomes, injuries, noise, and air pollution. They represent a prime opportunity for transportation and public health practitioners to work together to directly improve community health. Practitioners can learn from seven case areas covering research questions and salient concerns for practice. The document also includes over 250 questions that could be expanded into formal research problem statements.
Tennessee’s built environment and health case studies
This collection of case studies in Tennessee, primarily in rural communities, address the integration of health through master plans, corridor studies, sidewalk improvements, multi-modal access, and even a community kitchen. Each short case study (1-2 pages) has key lessons and recommendations that can be used by local advocates, community leaders, and governmental staff to identify strategies for integrating health. These case studies demonstrate the possibilities of integrating health into rural communities and small towns.
Systematic literature review of built environment effects on physical activity and active transport - an update and new findings on health equity
This systematic review—a review of the body of evidence on a subject—identified which environmental interventions increase physical activity for residents while also considering intervention costs. Furthermore, this study examined how the effects of these interventions differ by ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Interventions such as parks and playgrounds and active transportation facilities showed an increase in active transportation, visits to parks, and physical activity. There was some evidence that these kinds of interventions benefit socioeconomically advantaged groups more than other groups.
Planning a healthy Tennessee
Planning a Healthy Tennessee demonstrates the connections between specific community design features and health outcomes, and provides a real-world example of each feature. While applicable to a wide audience, particular emphasis was given towards its educational use within the design, development, and planning fields. The content is applicable to both rural and urbanized areas. Community design features positively impacting most of the social determinants of health merit consideration by transportation and land use professionals working across the rural-urban spectrum. Many healthy design features already exist in most communities, and they should be expanded on or replicated where practicable.
NCHRP research report 932: a research roadmap for transportation and public health management
The purpose of A Research Roadmap for Transportation and Public Health is to build upon thebody of literature strategic agendas, and research needs regarding calls for integrating transportation and health and to provide a plan for funding research over the next decade that can lead to greater consideration of health issues in transportation contexts. This report produced recommendations for integrating health into transportation, derived from a research process that involved both stakeholder engagement (including representatives from federal, state, and local transportation and health-related agencies) and a review and synthesis of existing literature (including peer-reviewed literature, grey literature such as reports, conference proceedings, magazines, and other published works). This report identified research needed to support specific agency processes to incorporate health; research gaps and needs and how research is translated into practice; research needed for emerging health issues; priority research problem statements, and developed an implementation plan for guiding research ideas into funded projects.
Metropolitan planning organization ideas to improve and provide more walking and bicycling projects
The initiatives spearheaded by the MPOs profiled in this guidebook have resulted in more walking and bicycling projects in communities across the country. The enclosed case studies, illustrating eight distinct strategies, provide inspiration, ideas, and replicable tactics for MPOs to emulate or consider. Eight case studies explain how regions have implemented walking and bicycling projects. The cases detail contextual factors, partnerships, timelines, steps in the decision making processes, and how communities dealt with barriers to implementation.
Considering health in US metropolitan long-range transportation plans: a review of guidance statements and performance measures
Transportation influences health primarily and most directly through traffic safety, air quality, physical activity, and accessibility. Despite the importance of all four components, only safety and air quality are typically considered during institutionalized transportation planning processes. This paper assesses how health impacts are considered in transportation planning by focusing on the long-range transportation plans that US metropolitan planning organizations develop. By assessing the state of the practice and discussing potential approaches, this review informs a stronger and more comprehensive consideration of health within the institutionalized structure of US metropolitan transportation planning.
Built environment evaluation guide
This guide provides a resource for evaluating the health impacts of built environment projects. It details how to evaluate a project using a logic model that is based on a range of metrics and suggests data inputs to the process. It focusses on physical activity promotion, capacity building, and community engagement. Used extensively by Tennessee practitioners and the TN Department of Health's Healthy Development Coordinators with its community partners, the guide has been used to evaluate over 130 Healthy Built Environment grant projects across Tennessee to gather feedback on the effects on the built environment.
Autonomous vehicles and public health
This report suggests that while autonomous vehicles (AVs) can increase some health risks (air pollution, noise, and sedentarism), proper regulation can reduce motor vehicle crashes and associated heath impacts, and reshape cities to promote healthy urban environments. Creating a Public Health framework and implementing policy recommendations for autonomous vehicles that include fully electric vehicles in a system of ridesharing and ridesplitting before the complete introduction of AVs into the market will yield public health benefits.
Integrating health and transportation in Nashville, TN, USA: from policy to projects
This journal article describes the integration of health into regional transportation planning, scoring criteria, policy, project prioritization, data collection, modeling and funding. This transformed $7 billion worth of transportation spending in the greater Nashville area, prioritizing health and equity over volume and speed of cars on roadways. It is possible to positively address health in transportation policy and funding. Transportation agencies can think creatively to include health in data collection and modeling.
Framework for better integrating health into transportation corridor planning
The Health in Transportation Corridor Planning Framework is a detailed worksheet to help practitioners incorporate health into corridor planning studies at every stage of the planning process. It can be used within an existing corridor planning process and is flexible and adaptable to many different issues and contexts. Cases studies from the five transportation agencies that tested the Framework Five transportation are available here.
Metrics for planning healthy communities (APA)
Inside this "Metrics for Planning Healthy Communities" report is a set of Healthy Planning Metrics that can be used to assess, measure, monitor, and report progress toward healthy planning goals. Key built environment indicators and policies are identified for five healthy communities domains to promote health and measure health inequities. This document encourages planners and allied professionals to think about the different domains of health that they influence through their work.
Leveraging the built environment for health equity: promising interventions for small and medium-sized cities (Urban Institute)
This research project identified changes to the built environment that small and medium-size cities can make to promote health and health equity. This document explores ten interventions to improve health equity through land use, transportation, and environmental systems. In addition to presenting these interventions, the document includes 13 promising practices for small and medium-size cities that are focused on how to apply a health equity lens to built environment interventions and how to overcome implementation challenges.
Partnering with metropolitan planning organizations to advance healthy communities
This resource highlights the importance of transportation to human health, environmental health, and equity. It describes how public health professionals can work in the transportation field to affect health outcomes. Specifically, it describes the role of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) in the development of regional transportation plans and the opportunities for incorporating health into MPO plans and processes.
At the intersection of public health and transportation: promoting healthy transportation policy
The purpose of this American Public Health Association document is to demonstrate how important transportation is to public health. This resource details the pathways by which transportation affects health, such as physical activity, safety, air quality, and equity. In addition, this document provides an overview of federal transportation programs and spending that are used or can be used to improve health.
Building healthy corridors: transforming urban and suburban arterials into thriving places
Building Healthy Corridors explores strategies for transforming commercial corridors—found in nearly every community across the United States—into places that support the health of the people who live, work, and travel along them. This report stems from a two-year project that involved partnerships with four communities in the United States that are working to improve a specific corridor in ways that positively affect health. It serves as a resource and reference for those who are undertaking corridor redevelopment efforts; it highlights the importance of health in decision-making processes; and it provides guidance, strategies, and insights for reworking corridors in health-promoting ways.
Envisioning healthy corridors: lessons from four communities
A supplement to the 2016 publication Building Healthy Corridors: Transforming Urban and Suburban Arterials into Thriving Places, this report describes the experiences of and lessons learned from the four demonstration corridors that participated in the second phase of ULI’s Healthy Corridors project and provides a set of common recommendations from both phases of the project that can be implemented to improve health along commercial corridors. The four corridors are located in Colorado, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. The deep dive into these corridors study discuss the details of each project, results of the study, and the identified the next steps and lessons learned. Lessons learned include looking beyond the corridor and capitalizing on assets that can be used for connections, prioritize areas that contribute to the corridor’s character, the importance of collecting good data for the corridor, consideration of obtaining local control of streets, creating smaller stakeholder groups, considering development of a health impact assessment, using data to develop health related and community goals and priorities, and creating a collaborative agreement between jurisdictions.
Blind spots: how unhealthy corridors harm communities and how to fix them
In the context of transportation networks, urban and suburban arterials are an essential but often overlooked and misunderstood link in a transportation chain, and they have outsized influence on their communities. They often struggle to balance the competing functions of moving cars quickly through a place and moving people to and from shops, restaurants, and other businesses safely. The report team reviews these commercial corridors regarding 1) Transportation 3) Health and safety 2) Economics 4) Equity. The results of the corridor audit are summarized by the overall health of the corridors, regional distribution, difference between urban and suburban corridors, and crash characteristics. Part 2 of the document presents causes and solutions from a policies and practices standpoint, including corridor case study “scorecards.”