Public Health Assignment: Evaluating The Article Of Northridge

Question

Task:The first assignment tests your comprehension of key concepts, theories and models regarding linkages between the built environment and health.

Case document: "Sorting Out the Connections Between the Built Environment and Health: A Conceptual Framework for Navigating Pathways and Planning Healthy Cities' You can download the article from the UniSA library webpage.

• In a paragraph describe what you think Northridge and her colleagues were arguing in this article – the answer should reflect the complexities of the model and the other points they raise ?
• In what ways could their paper be seen to apply to contemporary Australian urbanisation/urbanism and population health ?
• What do we have now that might go some way to addressing the shortcomings they described regarding the ability to conduct research back in 2003 ?
• Outline, preferably using basic visualisation tools, what you think is the most powerful but simple way to summarise the linkages between the built environment and health – justify your model by reference to the literature

Answer

In a paragraph describe what you think Northridge and her colleagues were arguing in this article – the answer should reflect the complexities of the model and the other points they raise ?

In this article discussed in this public health assignment Northridge and her colleagues were arguing about the factors that affect the health and wellbeing. Using a model for their research in this public health assignment the factors that affect health and wellbeing, they strongly focuses on the development of urban environments and population. By the research conducted in their neighborhood, they discuss about how the factors such as social, political and economic process affect the health of the population and their wellbeing. According to them, health and wellbeing are influenced by factors like built environment that are artificially made by people for living their life, and the social context. Other factors that make complexities in the growth of health and wellbeing are social crime, financial insecurity and lack of basic need. It is proved with evidence that large number of people who live in the present world are mostly homeless with families and there are also many children who are homeless and orphan. These people lacks medical care and this affect their health and wellbeing. On the whole, the collaboration of urban planning and public health lack indicators to monitor the effects made of urban planning. They also include that obesity and violence are the major physical problems faced by most of the population while unemployment, despair, self-satisfaction and lack of happiness are the major issues of wellbeing (Northridge, 2003).

In what ways could their paper be seen to apply to contemporary Australian urbanisation/urbanism and population health ?

The United States Human Settlement Program estimates that by 2030 approximately 3 billion people would be inhabiting in slum like conditions. Past town planners have failed to address policies that would translate into improved health for urban populations. This paper focuses on a model “Social Determinants of Health and Environment Health promotion “, which emphasizes the importance of urban morphology and recognizes the place of streets and buildings in the “new public health”. More importantly the paper deals with research undertaken so far on urban planning and public health to show the connection between the built environment and health so that recommendations are brought to light which could be useful in the future. Finally The researchers have dealt with lack of valid and reliable indicators of the built environment to monitor the health effects and the growth of megalopolis concepts which transcend across state lines impacting health status (Northridge, 2003). Australia is highly urbanized. Urban life is characterized by obesity, excess food intake, reliance on cars for transport and a consumer culture (Munasinghe, 2016). These leads to diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, chronic respiratory disease, injury, depression and anxiety. These are the issues highlighted in the paper.The evolution of cities has been characterized by 4 stages: poverty, industrial, consumption and eco-city, each stage having its own heath issues. The Australian context is more illustrated by its vast populations of immigrants from various parts of the world, again emphasized in the article. Taking all these into considerations it could be said that the article discussed in public health assignment is relevant to the present day context of urbanization and public health. Since australia and unites states are exactly matching in many factors of urbanisation and population health the same points are applicable for australia too.

What do we have now that might go some way to addressing the shortcomings they described regarding the ability to conduct research back in 2003 ?

American Planning Association and the American Journal of Public Health had given more attention to the public health rather than financial. These public health services researchers toward investigating the health has good outcome for urban people and to rural people too. The current health services provide scientific and policy focus on particular emphasis on the urban context.

There are many wrestles with key challenges in conducting sound scientific research on connection between the built environment and health (Frank et al., 2019) (Desouza and Flanery, 2013). Some of the reason for conducting research back in 2003 for the health issue are: -

• He necessity of dealing with the possible health consequences of myriad public and private sector activities, including those primarily concerned with commerce, housing, transportation, labour, energy, and education
• The lack of valid and reliable indicators of the built environment to monitor the health effects of urban planning and policy decisions, especially with regard to land use mix
• The growth of the “megalopolis” or “super urban region” that requires analysis of health effects across state lines and in circumscribed areas within multiple states.
• Natural look and view of early time was very efficient for health issues in comparison of present environment
• Transportation and other smoke producing facility was very less in ancient time or we can say during 2003 years
• Environment was free from toxic, chemical substances or some similar stuff (Desouza and Flanery, 2013).

Outline, preferably using basic visualisation tools, what you think is the most powerful but simple way to summarise the linkages between the built environment and health – justify your model by reference to the literature

There is huge relationship between environment and health. Both of them are interconnected between each other, they are dependent (Davies and Gray, 2009). Because of this, if one is disturbed then other is affected. According to this article, the life of human health, precautionary principle and sustainable are very important. Few of the list of visualisation tool for linking built environment and heath are: -

• Public health is concrete measure of neighbourhood and community
• To save the public health, an individual should save the natural property like forest, etc
• Urban planning and public health professional work together to conduct awareness program among people and bad impact of it on human life
• To built huge relationship between environment and health, we need to do more explicit about hypothesized pathway
• The urban planning authority fails to distribute of health factors like age, sex, caste, and class
• Every sort of people around us have to save surrounding nature. It should have to be polluted, Else its bad affect will be seen at our life.
• All the physical structure present in environment should be saved like, we are owner of it

A group should be established to take care of environment for our better health. Powerful tools used in MSExcel like graphs can be very useful in explaining the relationship between the linked variables. Differrent types of charts and graphs can be used for giving clear details. Suitable datasets needs to be collected and suitable varibales should be used for deciding the results. Column Chart, Pictograph, Line Graph, Pie Charts , Area Charts, XY Graph (Scatter Plot) are the commonly used tools. A detailed analysis is being conducted in this public health assignment to arrive at this conclusion.

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References
Davies, R. and Gray, C. (2009). Care pathways and designing the health-care built environment: an explanatory framework. International Journal of Care Pathways, 13(1), pp.7-16.

Desouza, K. and Flanery, T. (2013). Designing, planning, and managing resilient cities: A conceptual framework. Cities, 35, pp.89-99.

Frank, L., Iroz-Elardo, N., MacLeod, K. and Hong, A. (2019). Pathways from built environment to health: A conceptual framework linking behavior and exposure-based impacts. Journal of Transport & Health, 12, pp.319-335.

Munasinghe, H. (2016). Towards a conceptual framework for the conservation of urban heritage. Built-Environment Sri Lanka, 1(1), p.1.

Northridge, M. (2003). Sorting Out the Connections Between the Built Environment and Health: A Conceptual Framework for Navigating Pathways and Planning Healthy Cities. Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 80(4), pp.556-568.