Indicators can be used to improve a new development’s impact on health and wellbeing.
Measuring whether we have achieved certain project goals is an important way for public and private sector organisations to demonstrate their success. In the property sector, professionals will already be familiar with key performance indicators (KPIs) that show outputs from buildings and infrastructure. KPIs may be about sales values, carbon footprint or cost per square metre, among other factors.
Using metrics to inform the healthy design, construction and maintenance of new development is new to most property and built environment professionals. Consultants may support this task, but everybody involved in the project can benefit from a basic understanding.
There are general factors to think about when choosing indicators, including: scale, purpose, cost, priorities and collaboration.
Pointers for using health indicators on new developments
Understanding the local context: As with other site investigations, you can use local public health data to understand key environmental exposures and health issues in the area. This may form part of a health impact assessment (HIA). For example, it may be possible to find local air pollution concentrations and rates of hospital admissions for asthma. Site surveys using indicators can be conducted with and without local residents to identify assets or hazards in the area. There are many healthy development checklists that can be used to support this process.
Set targets for the development: The developer and other stakeholders may set targets for how the development will seek to improve (or not harm) health through design and planning strategies. Existing standards are available (such as certification systems like WELL, Fitwel, LEED, and BREEAM) or a design team may develop their own set of targets. The database of 300 indicators may help with the selection of appropriate metrics. If indicators are used, there will be a need to specify current and target levels. Especially on large projects, early agreement on these targets will help all professions to ensure their contribution supports the health goals.
Monitor progress and results: If baseline measures have been taken, it will be possible to understand how the development has impacted the local environment in ways that support (or harm) health and wellbeing.
For short-term exposures such as noise and air pollution created during construction, it will be important to regularly monitor these and ideally to publicly report the results. If problems arise, mitigation measures can be taken to avoid harm.
For long-term benefits, such as increasing residents’ physical activity or wellbeing, developers could use public health indicators to determine impact. However, a few limitations should be noted:
- Whose health? The people living in the area before and after development are not always the same, so any uplift in health may not relate to local populations. Ideally, baseline measures of local residents who may benefit from the development can be taken to show a ‘before and after’ story.
- What caused any changes? Any differences in the environment or local health measured before and after a new development may not have resulted from the development itself. Changes could be caused by other factors, such as national or local air pollution control policies.
- How long to wait before measuring? Improvements to health could be immediate (e.g. if noise or air pollution is reduced) but in many cases they will take time to detect.
As a simple evaluation, developers (or other stakeholders) could pay for a survey of residents’ behaviours and self-reported health pre- and post-development.
Many of healthy urban environment guidance documents include useful monitoring indicators.