The aim of the planning education course is to provide understanding of the interactions between the built environment and health, and skills to engage these issues as professional planners, public health practitioners and other related professionals. More specifically, the learning goals are for students to:
- Understand public health and planning history, evolution and significant movements to the present, and historical and current theories on the relationship between the built environment and public health.
- Identify contemporary features of the built environment such as patterns of development, parks, public works projects, houses, and transportation systems that reflect past efforts to influence health, and use methods developed by architects, urban planners, public health professionals, sociologists and anthropologists to address current health impacts of the built environment.
- Learn about oneself and the context in which others operate to better integrate that understanding when evaluating differing built environments, socioeconomic positions, social and cultural backgrounds, and health status.
- Adopt new feelings, interests or values based on issues addressed throughout the semester.
- Develop skills to identify studies and engage communities, critique methods and findings, and apply lessons from planning and public health research to current and future problems.
- Integrate current evidence regarding the impacts of the built environment on health with information and perspectives from other courses and/or personal experiences.
