Envisioning a Healthy Community is a 50-minute narrated slideshow developed for the University of Oklahoma, School of Community Medicine Summer Institute. The Summer Institute is a weeklong deep dive into the Tulsa’s that introduces incoming students of medicine, physician assisting, nursing, allied health, social work, urban studies and others to the community they will be practicing in and learning from in their coming years of study. Before touring the city and interviewing citizens, caregivers, health and social service providers, the students and their faculty mentors listen to anchor lectures and discuss all of the major determinants of health, including genetics, behavior and lifestyle, social support, health care and the built environment. This slideshow is a summary for the anchoring lecture introducing the students to the environmental determinants of health and has been refined by Professor Shawn Schaefer over the last seven years. As such, it poses and tries to answer three basic questions:
What kind of city have we shaped?
How is that city shaping us?
How can we envision a healthy community?
Using Tulsa as a case study, the first question is analyzed using the three-D’s of density, diversity and design. The second question looks at how the design of the city is affecting public health and the last part of the lecture asks listeners to envision a new kind of city based on ecological design principles. The talk wraps up with a sample of work from the OU Urban Design Studio, a small area planning effort from 2011: the Northland Plan.
