South Downtown Tacoma Subarea Plan Health Impact Assessment
The way we design and build our communities has significant impacts on individual and population health, safety, and well-being. Planners and health professionals can work together to create living conditions and environments that allow people to adopt and maintain happy, healthy lifestyles.
This health impact assessment (HIA), conducted by a team of University of Washington (UW) graduate students, identifies potential health concerns and action items for the City of Tacoma’s South Downtown Subarea Plan. HIAs are an emerging method for considering how policies, plans, and projects potentially affect human health both positively and negatively. The overall goal of an HIA is to present practical recommendations that lead to health-supportive actions by decision makers. An HIA of the South Downtown Subarea Plan was deemed appropriate after the Plan’s authors were approached and they expressed interest in receiving it.
Allen, C., Ambriz, E., Blank, K., Bomfim, L., Brunsteter, H., Bush, E., et al. (2013). South
Downtown Tacoma Subarea Plan Health Impact Assessment. (K. Blank, E. Howard, K. McCabe, & L. P. Walkinshaw, Eds.) Tacoma, WA: City of Tacoma.