Summary
Healthy place shaping seeks to design health into the urban environment, enabling residents to become active, connect with their neighbours, and access nature in the green spaces around them.
Measures that can help reduce risks to health which also address other challenges such as climate change include:
- design of homes to ensure they are resilient to heat and cold
- home adaptations to support independent living
- home improvements to address existing poor quality housing stock
- more secure private tenancies
- investing in the supply of affordable homes.
Public health and planning share the same roots – both professions emerged from a desire to create places that would support good health. Healthy place shaping seeks to return to this more integrated way of working, with public health and NHS colleagues working much more closely with planning officers to design health into communities and to ensure that they have the health and care facilities to meet the needs of the local population.
Local planning authorities are required to engage with wider health and social care partners including primary care, CCGs, STPs/ICSs and NHS trusts and should specifically refer to local health needs evidence when developing their local plans/local development plans.
Key Outputs/Resources
Several local planning tools have been developed to help to ‘put health into place’; further information is available here.
Further Information
Find out more about the Future Oxfordshire Partnership's work to help shape healthy communities