Mapping the built environment: Peel Public Health’s Healthy Development Mapping and Monitoring Project

The BCCDC/NCCEH Environmental Health Seminar Series provides an opportunity for learning and knowledge exchange on a variety of environmental health topics. The seminars can be attended in-person or online.

Speakers: Maria Mukhtar, Analyst, Research and Policy, Peel Public Health (Ontario); David Guillette, Data and GIS Specialist, Peel Data Centre (Ontario)

Summary: The impact of the built environment on health and chronic disease outcomes is increasingly being recognized. The Region of Peel – Public Health has been at the forefront of collaborating with Regional and local municipal planning departments to create innovative approaches to entrenching health as an explicit consideration in the land use planning process. Successful implementation of public health built environment interventions relies on the ability to measure changes in the built form, over time. The Healthy Development: Mapping and Monitoring Project measures the health-promoting potential of the existing built form across Peel’s neighbourhoods, and will monitor health-promoting changes to the built form within these neighbourhoods, over time. Land use planning data is used to create neighbourhood-level GIS-based indicators that are grounded in evidence-informed built environment elements that increase the potential for active transportation in neighbourhoods. In this webinar, we will provide an overview of the methodology and collaborative decision-making process required to create built environment indicators, a description of the indicators, and their role in measuring the health-promoting potential of neighbourhoods in Peel. We will also present a demonstration of the Healthy Development: Monitoring Map, an online interactive story map displaying these built environment indicators and the Peel Walkability Composite Index.