Healthy Cities: Assessing Health Impacts of Policies and Plans
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate-level course on how urban environments shape public health. It covers built, psychosocial, economic, and natural environment factors that influence health behaviors and outcomes, and introduces Health Impact Assessment (HIA) methodology as a tool for integrating public health into policy and planning decisions. Materials include lecture notes, readings, and assignments designed to give planning and policy students hands-on practice applying HIA methods to real policy questions. The course targets students preparing to work with public health agencies, advocacy groups, or planning organizations, bridging the gap between urban design and health outcomes. As with other MIT OCW offerings, all course materials are freely available online with no enrollment or certificate cost, licensed under Creative Commons for open use.