This project focuses on improving community healthy through the environments people “live, work and play.” The built environment is important because it can be used to reduce health inequities, strengthen the integration of health and planning and reduce socioeconomic issues. The project discusses the five categories that impact overall health and determines how planners can promote healthy lifestyles to counteract these factors through the built environment. Planners must be a focus on both traditional and social factors which impact human health and use metrics keep track of elements that are key determinants of health. It provides a pyramid addressing how the increasing population leads to increasing efforts needed. The authors strongly emphasize that planners should look past typical planning practices and look to “education, social services, health care, and other social determinants of health that shape long-term population health”.

Each chapter discusses it discusses community examples which include active living, emergency preparedness, environmental exposures, food and nutrition, health and human services policies and social cohesion and mental health.