Healthy Community Design
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The design of your community can help make everyone happier and healthier.
Your address can play an important role in how long you live and how healthy you are. The physical design of your community affects your health every time you step out your front door. Sometimes making healthy choices is not easy—being physically active is hard if you do not have access to sidewalks or parks, and eating right is hard if healthy foods are not available.
You can help make the healthy choice the easy choice by:
- attending community meetings where decisions are made about how land will be used,
- talking with elected officials, and
- working for policy change
Your actions can help:
- reverse adult and childhood obesity
- reduce your risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes
- lower air pollution
- reduce traffic injuries
- make the community stronger and more enjoyable for everyone
- increase safety and reduce crime
Your input on land-use decisions in your community can help make everyone happier and healthier.
To help you provide input on land-use decisions in your community, CDC has created a Healthy Community Design Checklist Toolkit. This resource has information and education materials to help individuals, public health officials, and planners enhance the health and the livability of their neighborhoods.
More information is available on designing and building healthy places.
- Page last reviewed: April 4, 2016
- Page last updated: April 4, 2016
- Content source:
- National Center for Environmental Health, Healthy Community Design Group
- Page maintained by: Office of the Associate Director for Communication, Digital Media Branch, Division of Public Affairs