Towards Healthy Communities: An approach through built environment interventions, a case of Bhopal

Abstract

Regular physical activity reduces the rate of diabetes and other chronic diseases like blood pressure, cardiovascular disease etc. Despite this few people involve themselves in daily physical activity. The Healthy Community Movement is a growing global effort for the improvement of health and well-being of individuals and families, primarily through policies that sustain positive and lasting changes to local, state, and national systems and environments. The health of the community is not just a medical issue but rather affected by built, social, natural and economic environments. From various research studies, it was seen that if people have adequate paths to walk on, have destinations to walk to and people to stop and chat with and feel safe they are much more likely to engage in physical activity and walk instead of driving. In India, the approach of National Health Policy is just limited to development and improvement of health care systems. The policy does not have specify any role of built environment in shaping the health of an individual. Therefore, this research aims to develop a framework for promoting healthy communities by identifying parameters and its indicators related to built environment. The objectives of the research are to study and identify relationship between built environment and healthy communities; to study various approaches and identify parameters and indicators that contributes for making healthy communities; to assess the health environment of communities through developed framework for study areas in Bhopal and finally prepare strategies and spatial plans for interventions to promote healthy communities. For assessment of health conditions two wards of Bhopal were selected, one located at core (ward 18) while another at periphery (ward 63) and assessed using HIART matrix inspired from HEART Urban matrix. The study involved an analysis of built environment conditions to find out what discourages people from using Non-motorized transport through primary survey of the study areas. The results showed that lack of non-motorized transport infrastructure, high vehicle usage, unsafe streets, improper solid waste management, poor water quality, lack of open spaces and its maintenance leads to increase in diseases like diabetes, cardio vascular diseases, blood pressure, arthritis, cholera/ malaria/ gastric diseases etc. Planning interventions in shaping built environment to promote physical activity can act as an approach towards the healthy communities. Hence the study proposes detail planning interventions which would be helpful in improving the health conditions of the communities. Also it proposes a framework to assess the health condition of the community thereby making it less prone to diseases. The further scope of the research would be to develop a model for healthy communities in terms of density, land use mix, housing and transportation which would promote healthy living among the communities.