Challenge:
Work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to communicate with influencers about healthy community design with the goal of raising the priority of public health factors during community development projects.
Fresh Perspective:
- Conduct a meaningful conversation about healthy community design by convening a workshop of relevant thought leaders in the public health, planning and built environment sectors at CDC headquarters
Authentic Approach
CAPITALIZE ON CDC’S POSITION AS A CONVERSATION CATALYST
- Conducted a series of interviews with professionals in the relevant sectors
- Conceived The Healthy Community Design workshop targeting a unique, interdisciplinary audience of developers, designer/architects, planners, transportation officials, elected community leaders, and public health officials
- Address how community design characteristics can have an impact on a community’s health (fitness level, respiratory health, etc.)
CREATE A FOCUSED EVENT, THEN KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING
- Identified leaders at two dozen key organizations – the American Planning Association, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, etc., and invited them to attend the event at CDC headquarters
- Planned the event, hired Architectural Record’s editor-in-chief to moderate, and facilitated an exchange of best practices in healthy community design
- Drafted and disseminated a comprehensive report crystallizing the group’s observations and recommendations
- Promoted the event and its outcome throughout the built environment community via association and trade press
Meaningful Impact
- Achieved the goal of building the foundation for future collaboration among participants in promoting and conducting research on healthy community design
- News of the workshop ran in a dozen trade association newsletters : the Smart Growth newsletter, the Congress for the New Urbanism’s newsletter, and The American Society of Landscape Architects’ LAND e-newsletter, etc.
- Worked with the leader of a national conference on the built environment to get packaged materials about the workshop to attendees
