The societal cost of unhealthy urban development

The result of a major (six-year) research programme (TRUUD*), and a three-year pilot, (UPSTREAM**), it is based on a series of systematic reviews and primary research, and provides a comprehensive and robust methodology, which has been tested in local, regional and national applications and is being adopted by central government as part of its formal appraisal.

Using the granular detail within HAUS, we demonstrate the magnitude of effects that poor quality environments inside and outside the home can have on health, and who might be most at risk. We show how the burden of health falls across the community, and how HAUS can help meet the needs of policy makers to understand the distributional effects of interventions by understanding trade-offs between health gains and health losses in any given scenario. We demonstrate how this information can be used to influence decision-making, and give planners, investors and policy makers the evidence they need to make the case for health in local, regional and national contexts.

We reflect on what the implications are of monetising health in cost-benefit analyses of place based interventions, and how alternative methodologies for valuing health can have a big impact on the conclusions we make in health impact appraisals.

*TRUUD stands for ‘Tackling Root Causes Upstream in Unhealthy Urban Development’
**UPSTREAM is the shortened title of the project ‘Moving Health Upstream in Urban Development’