Home is Health: Built Environment As a Risk Factor for Chronic Disease.

In a new feature article, published in the latest edition of eNews from the Canadian Alliance for Regional Risk Factor Surveillance (CARRFS), science writer Paul Webster explores new grounds in public health surveillance and related topics through extensive coverage of pertinent topics.

The homes, neighborhoods, communities and cities we live in – our “built environments” – frame social relations and imprint lifestyles, cultures, and economies. They can also inflict health problems. When we say the physical and social conditions in which people live have enormous health impacts, it is often built environment we are talking about. Built environment is a kind of primordial ‘cause of causes’.

This sounds sensible. But pinpointing the actual health effects caused by built environments can be as maddeningly confusing as urban sprawl itself. Disentangling the role of the built environment from confounding factors such as ethnicity, genetics, and lifestyle is forbiddingly difficult.

Read Webster’s full article, here.