Designing healthy communities

English

Executive producers/directors, Harry Wiland, Dale Bell ; producer, writer, editor, Beverly Baroff ; directors of photography, Dale Bell, Jonathan Bell ; music composed by David Loeb, Gary Griffin, Brenda Warren.

Host & narrator, Richard Jackson.

Originally produced by Media Policy Center in 2012.

1. Retrofitting suburbia: Dr. Richard Jackson MD MPH, investigates the link between our nations obesity and Type 2 Diabetes epidemic with urban sprawl fueled by car dependency. To prevent disease through better urban planning, Boulder, CO redesigns the city to make bicycles a safe alternative transportation. Two Denver suburbs transform dead malls into --2. Rebuilding places of the heart: When U.S. industry and manufacturing collapsed or went elsewhere, cities like Elgin, IL, and Syracuse, NY, (like many communities in the United States) were left with the task of redefining themselves for a new paradigm. Leading the way to a greener, more sustainable Elgin is a group of high school --3. Social policy in concrete: Dr. Jackson believes it is every citizens right to live in a clean, healthy environment. This isnt the case for many low-income neighborhoods, built near big transportation hubs and struggling industrial cities like Oakland, CA and Detroit, MI. We meet a morbidly obese grandmother struggling to raise seven grandchildren, all --4. Searching for Shangri-La: Dr. Jackson searches past and present America for healthy, sustainable communities of all sizes and shapes that can serve as models for the rest of the nation. His journey takes him to Roseto, PA, Prairie Crossing, IL, New York City, Charleston, SC, and the forgotten 1960s urban renewal project of --Kanopy.

A provocative and challenging new 4-hour public television series (2012), Designing Healthy Communities, hosted by celebrated author and teacher Richard Jackson, MD, MPH. Dr. Jackson makes the case that the rapidly deteriorating public health of our citizens is linked directly to nearly half-a-century of bad design decisions, now frozen in concrete. Each of the 4 hours looks at the different impacts our built environment in urban and suburbia areas have on key public health indices---obesity, diabetes, heart, asthma, cancer and depression. Dr. Jackson links bad community design with burgeoning health costs, then analyses and illustrates how ordinary citizens, including many young people, are trying to do about this urgent crisis, by looking upstream for solutions before ill health and disease occurs. Dr. Jackson inhabits the frontier between public health and urban planning, and offers us hopeful examples of innovative transformations.--Kanopy.

Originally produced,Santa Monica, Calif., Media Policy Center, 2012.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.