Feeling the sun’s rays, breathing in cool air, lying amongst the trees, standing in the rain — all ways of how nature can ground people and bring about feelings of joy. While it’s true that most Latinos and Americans might spend up to 90% of their time indoors, building design can give inhabitants a sense of connectivity to our environment, or biophilia. Construction workers and architects should make the most of nature to create health-centric structures, according to the American Institute of Architects (AIA). “Simply put, nature is good for us because we are part of nature,” writes Dr. Miles Richardson, director of core psychology programs at the University of Derby. “We are human animals evolved to make sense of the natural world, and this embeddedness in the ...
Improving safe routes for people to bike can help cities reach their health, equity, economic, and climate change goals. Kansas City, Missouri (10.2% Latino), for example, can save 36 lives every year and increase local spending by $500 million if the city fully implements its bike plan over the next two decades, according to a new study from the University of Missouri Kansas City’s Department of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Design. Commissioned by Bike Walk Kansas City, researchers analyzed various social and economic benefits of the Kansas City Bicycle Master Plan. “This research confirms how essential a quality bike network is to so many city goals: safety, health, economic opportunity, and fiscal sustainability,” Bike Walk KC’s Director of Community Planning, ...
Inequities in health arise from social and structural inequities and the policies, laws, and culture that keep them in place. To address inequities that affect health, it is important to make the distinction between individual-level (midstream) interventions to address “social needs,” and community-level (upstream) interventions to address “social determinants.” Individual-level efforts to address social needs are necessary, but not enough. Characterizing these interventions as efforts to address social determinants of health conveys a false sense of progress. "If we, even inadvertently, imply that the social determinants of health can be solved by offering Uber rides to individual patients or by deploying community health navigators, it will be challenging, if not ...
Where you live is significantly linked to how healthy you are. Sadly, U.S. Latino communities face unaffordable housing, unreliable public transportation, and a lack of green space and parks. This limits Latinos’ access to health-promoting assets─medical care, good schools, healthy food, and physical activity. This contributes to health inequities affecting this population. Fortunately, community leaders can adopt dynamic land-use methods, public-private partnerships, and community involvement to build and revitalize Latino neighborhoods. This can create affordable housing, connection to public transportation, and more green spaces. The result is health equity─a fair, just opportunity to achieve the best health possible.
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This is part of the Salud America! The State of Latinos and Housing, Transportation, and Green Space: A Research Review » Future Research
Many of the policy suggestions and strategies highlighted in this review are based upon research performed within urban Latino communities. While many of the suggestions may be applicable to smaller Latino communities, it will be essential to determine if they will be successful when applied to the semi-isolated Latino communities of the “new Latino destinations.” In one sense, because the majority of these policy recommendations hinge upon community activism and solidarity, it may be possible to translate them into the heavily Latino-majority communities found in these small-town and rural areas. However, activism builds upon political ...
This is part of the Salud America! The State of Latinos and Housing, Transportation, and Green Space: A Research Review » Conclusions
Latinos need affordable housing options, access to reliable, relevantly routed public transportation, and connected, safe, and maintained green spaces for transportation and recreational use. Many societal and economic factors are responsible for the inequitable distribution of funds to support these projects. For instance, it was beyond the scope of this review to fully discuss the historical legacy of disparities. However, with proper political will and community activism, change can be made to improve access to affordable housing, public transportation, and green spaces in all types of Latino communities. A common theme across the research has ...
This is part of the Salud America! The State of Latinos and Housing, Transportation, and Green Space: A Research Review » Summary
Neighborhood development initiatives in Latino communities that rely upon “bottom-up” activism, a wide public-private partnership network, and “cultural brokers” have been effective at driving and maintaining long-term community change, especially in the context of environmental justice in Latino communities.
Green Space Access Is an Environmental Justice Issue
Over the past two decades, uneven access to green space has become an important environmental justice issue as awareness of its contribution to public health has become more widely recognized [33, 52]. In general, racial/ethnic minorities and low-income people have less access to ...
This is part of the Salud America! The State of Latinos and Housing, Transportation, and Green Space: A Research Review » Summary
Green space initiatives that take community concerns, needs, and desires into consideration may be most effective at improving Latino physical and mental well-being. Green spaces support public health in many ways—they filter air, remove pollution, attenuate noise, cool temperatures, replenish ground water, mitigate stormwater, and can provide food [53, 54]. Beyond these benefits, however, are the physical, mental, and emotional benefits of green space, as discussed below.
Green Spaces Benefit Latino Physical Health
Policies and programs that specifically work to improve these conditions in Latino communities will go a long way to increasing the ...
This is part of the Salud America! The State of Latinos and Housing, Transportation, and Green Space: A Research Review » Summary
Latino communities lack green spaces that are safe, accessible, functional, and culturally relevant.
What Are Green Spaces?
Within urban, suburban, and rural communities, green space can be natural or maintained outdoor public space, such as parks, playgrounds, sporting fields, school yards, day care and early care yards, greenways/trails, tree-lined sidewalks, community gardens, nature conservation areas, forests, as well as less conventional urban “green alleyways,” “pocket parks,” and green walls or roofs [52].
Green Space Inequities Exist
Unfortunately, access to and quality of green space is not equitably distributed. Compared with ...
