Designing Healthy Communities on Public Television

Found out today from my friend Rachel that public television is broadcasting a wonderful 4-part series on Designing Healthy Communities. In Austin, you can catch the series on the KLRU-Q station on Sundays at 2pm. Here is a description from the show's website:

Designing Healthy Communities is a multimedia project that highlights people and communities trying to balance health and nature with work, play, and life, and offers best practice solutions for all citizens. Stories and methodologies explored in Designing Healthy Communities point the way toward a healthy and sustainable future. The host of our series is Dr. Richard Jackson, pediatrician, former CDC head of environmental science, top public health official in California, and current UCLA Department Chair and Professor of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health. We met Dr. Jackson at one of the more than 150 lectures and papers he delivers annually. Dr. Jackson's message is compelling: over the past half century, the built environment has contributed to the alarming fact that almost two thirds of our population is overweight, suffering from diabetes, heart, asthma, depression and other chronic diseases. If we look upstream at the causes--obeisance to the automobile, lack of public transportation, parks, sidewalks, bike paths, multi-use housing, and community sense of well-being--we discover that the built environment threatens our future generations. Dr. Jackson believes that improving the design of our communities holds the potential for addressing many of the nation's current childhood and adult health concerns. 

Also want to share these wonderful photos that my friend Kim sent me from her visit to Discovery Green park in the heart of downtown Houston. The 12-acre park offers enticing features for children and people of all ages (even in the 100 degree heat) and is cultivating new life in an area that used to consist of a swath of surface parking lots.