NPHW Day 2: Community

The second day of National Public Health Week presents this question: How do we make sure that people understand that simply providing health insurance to all Americans isn't enough to make us healthy?

So many things in our community affect our health and livelihood. Check out this post about how where you live is important to your health.

How does this image relate to public health?


In so many ways.

Suburban neighborhoods provide safe roads for kids to play and less exposure to violence. However, there are also higher rates of obesity in suburbia, which many attribute to how suburban communities are designed. Suburban communities have an interesting geographic layout. For instance, a home might be geographically close to retail locations, but take a long time to get to because sprawling neighborhoods block easy access to a variety of locations. Cities often grow vertically, meaning that there are so many places in a short distance from any given place. However, suburban neighborhoods grow horizontally, making pedestrian travel inconvenient. Take a look at this picture--


View Suburban Community in a larger map

How long do you think it would take to get to a nearby retail location from the house down the street?


View Suburban Geography in a larger map

The house is only 1156 feet away, but according to Google Maps, the 1156 feet turns into 1.7 miles of driving because of the way the neighborhood is built into the surrounding roads.


View Driving to Retail in a larger map

The map shows that residents would have to drive over .5 miles before they can exit their neighborhood. Then they would have to drive another mile to get to the intersection, and finally do a u-turn to get to the opposite side of the road where retail locations are located. There are a lot of instances in suburban areas where residents are geographically close to many locations, but must take a longer drive to reach those areas. Suburbia promotes a driving lifestyle, which not only decreases physical activity of its residents, but also leads to higher levels of traffic pollution.