Design Space in Public Health

If design is everywhere humans are and shapes our interactions in the built environment, which dictates how we interact with the world around us should it not be considered important enough to be a part of public health?

I recently picked up a copy of the architecturally-inspired Arcade Magazine because of its theme on Science, Art and Inquiry. Inside was a piece by Andrew Dannenberg, Howard Frumpkin and Daniel Friedman. The first two are MD’s and the last author an architect and all are from the University of Washington . In that article, they outline a case for why design and public health should go together. The audience for the piece are those interested in architecture.

Indeed, Arcade’s purpose is to “incite dialogue about design and the built environment”. It makes me wonder why we don’t have something that “incites dialogue about design and public health?”.

Yet, I couldn’t help but think that same piece should be published in a public health space. In the article, the authors outline a few of the key areas where design can contribute to public health.

Among the first of these areas is promoting physical activity and the role that design can play in building and planning for spaces that encourage people to move in healthy ways:

Working together with public health professionals and planners, designers can help remedy what urban theorist Nan Ellin calls “place-deficit disorder,” starting with the basics – stairways, sidewalks, landscapes and contiguous urban spaces – which they can compose to attract greater pedestrian use.

Designing for resiliency is another of the areas where good design can benefit the public by creating a solid urban infrastructure to literally weather the storms that come upon us:

Evidence-based design can help reduce vulnerability and enhance the resilience of buildings and infrastructure, but most importantly, the communities who depend on them.

They also look at the role of design in enhancing sustainability and as a means for assisting environmental health while shaping the demand for sustainable products:

Designers possess the unique skills, knowledge and practices to specify the use of benign materials across scales based on life cycle analysis, energy conservation, carbon management, and environmental and health impacts. As designers expand these practices, they educate their clients, inform the public and shift the market.\

Lastly, they focus on how design can contribute to reducing social inequities by drawing on evidence looking at the connections between space and wellbeing for those in low-income neighbourhoods:

Recent studies demonstrate that links between greater access to green space and lower mortality are more pronounced among the poor than the wealthy. Housing initiatives that offer better homes for low-income persons, workplace design that protects workers, and universal design that improves access for activities by persons with disabilities—these practices benefit vulnerable populations and offer designers unlimited opportunities to help foster fuller, healthier lives.

Expanding the discourse of design and public health

It was refreshing to read a ‘conversation’ between public health and design and some taking the issue of space and health seriously from a design point of view. Some, like Emily Pilloton and her Project H design others have sought to use design as a bridge to social wellbeing by looking at space as being about communities and economics. Her video below explains how she has taken a design-driven approach to her work in promoting new sustainable ways to engage her adopted community of Bertie county.

Both of these examples of design in public health take a place-based approach, however there is much that can be done with designing the experience of health beyond place. Jon Kolko’s group at AC4D looked at design and homeless in their book Wicked Problems.  Andrew Shea has looked at the link between graphic design and social good in his book, which is explained further in his TEDX talk below. The design firm IDEO has been working on social good projects now for a few years through its IDEO.org platform and program.

  Bringing public health in

What seems to be missing and that the article in Arcade did and that was bring public health in. Emily Pilloton, Jon Kolko, Andrew Shea and many other terrific socially-minded designers are changing the way the public thinks about public health. Public health needs to be doing this too. It is striking that we have so few public health professionals — Drs Andrew Dannenberg and Howard Frumpkin as exceptions — doing the kind of design-oriented research and publishing in this area. It is ripe and public health and design both need it.

I don’t expect a lot of public health folks read Arcade, but maybe they should. And maybe we should be reading more about design in public health publications too.