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November 16, 2006

Two Long-Estranged Fields to Connect at Bay Area Event
Former state health official calls meeting of public health officers and city planners "the first in 100 years"

Oakland, CA — In what is believed to be the first gathering of its kind for the past century, city planners and public health officers from all nine Bay Area counties will sit down together on December 1 to begin exploring land use solutions to public health problems.

"This is the first time in perhaps 100 years that planning and health directors for a large region have come together for a meeting like this," says former California State Public Health Officer Richard Jackson, who will deliver the keynote address at the event. "It's critical that professionals from both fields begin working together."

There are substantial health consequences in the way cities and suburbs are designed, says Bob Prentice, director of the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, a collaboration of Bay Area public health departments working toward reducing health inequities and chronic disease burden. "Unless we figure out how to encourage people to be more active in their day-to-day lives, this could be the first generation in over a century that can expect to live shorter lives than their parents."

Historically, planners and public health officers have interacted very little with each other, says Lisa Feldstein, senior policy director of the Oakland-based nonprofit Public Health Law Program (PHLP). "This event will lay the groundwork for collaboration between the two fields," she notes. "We're at the threshold of a huge shift."

PHLP is convening the event in partnership with the Bay Area Planning Directors' Association and the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative. The meeting will feature an interactive exercise in which planners and health officers from each county will sit down to work through a hypothetical challenge together.