![](images/Image_sketch.jpg)
Welcome
Land use, economic development, and redevelopment policies offer a valuable set of tools to promote and enhance healthy communities. Local governments, private developers, and community groups can all work to create patterns of development that improve community health--by ensuring that farmers' markets and neighborhood grocery stores are supported, for instance, or by promoting sidewalks, parks and other environmental components that encourage physical activity.
Planning for Healthy Places at Public Health Law & Policy works to engage public health advocates in the planning decision-making process throughout California. We develop tools for training advocates in the relationship between the built environment and public health, and provide technical assistance for creating and implementing land use policies that support healthier communities.
Contact us for more information, resources, or technical assistance or training inquiries.
Featured Resource
Cultivating the Web: Eatwell’s High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement and Netcentric Campaigns
Are you thinking about ways to connect to your community, share messages and ideas, and generate action online? Here are a couple of resources that we’ve found particularly useful in thinking about how the web can be used as a tool for creating healthy, sustainable communities:
- Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement was created by the Eat Well Guide. The Guide features information on using a variety of web tools such as Flickr, YouTube, and others to promote good, local, sustainable food for all.
- Another great guide is available from Netcentric Campaigns, and online hub for progressive social change: Demystifying the Interactive Web: Supporting Networks Through Web-Based Tools. This resource includes helpful hints on specific tools (RSS, Wikis, etc.) as well as characteristics of healthy networks.
Illustrations by Janet Cleland
© California Department of Health Services