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In the provocative new 4-hour series, "Designing Healthy Communities" host/narrator Richard Jackson, MD, MPH, looks at the impact our built environment has on key public health indices – obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, cancer and depression. Dr. Jackson shows the connection between poorly designed communities with burgeoning health costs, then analyzes and illustrates what citizens are doing about this urgent crisis by looking upstream for innovative solutions. On this call, Steve Heilig, CHE Director of Public Health & Education, and Director of Public Health & Education, San Francisco Medical Society, talked with Dr. Jackson about the built environment and keys to designing health-promoting communities.

Praise for "Designing Healthy Communities":

"You wouldn't expect a doctor to write one of the most important books about planning towns and cities, but that is exactly what Richard Jackson has done. He makes it clear that sprawl isn't just an aesthetic problem--it's a public health issue. Planners have long known that towns and cities that are designed to encourage people to use their feet instead of their cars enhance our sense of community, and Jackson shows us that they also make people feel better, reduce obesity, and extend our life span."
- Paul Goldberger, The New Yorker