NEW YORK – Regional Plan Association has received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study ways to use urban planning to address critical public health issues in the New York metropolitan region.
The $718,000 grant will enable RPA to develop a model for incorporating benchmarks for public health into long-term urban planning. These benchmarks will shape the research and recommendations of RPA’s Fourth Regional Plan, a once-in-a-generation planning effort to create a blueprint for shared prosperity, growth and sustainability in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan region.
The public health research for the Fourth Plan will go beyond analyzing traditional health metrics for the region’s residents by investigating the health implications of climate change, sedentary lifestyles, degraded natural environments, rising inequality and persistent and concentrated poverty.
“With this project, we are working to demonstrate how regional systems and policies can support a culture of health in diverse communities, from impoverished urban neighborhoods to the region’s auto-oriented suburbs,” said Christopher Jones, vice president of research at RPA.
With this grant and its work on the Fourth Regional Plan, RPA aims to make a measurable impact on public health in the region over the next generation by combining RPA’s expertise in planning with the foundation’s extensive research tools and developed knowledge base.
About Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
For more than 40 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve health and health care. We are striving to build a national Culture of Health that will enable all to live longer, healthier lives now and for generations to come. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at www.rwjf.org/facebook.
About Regional Plan Association
Regional Plan Association is America’s most distinguished independent urban research and advocacy organization. RPA improves the New York metropolitan region’s economic health, environmental sustainability and quality of life through research, planning and advocacy. Since the 1920s, RPA has produced three landmark plans for the region and is working on a fourth plan that will tackle challenges related to sustained economic growth and opportunity, climate change, infrastructure and the fiscal health of our state and local governments. For more information, please visit www.rpa.org.