Not Enough Anymore

The success of historical collaboration between public health and urban planning is undeniable. Sanitation improvements significantly reduced the spread of disease across the developed world’s cities and improved overall quality of life. However, the weakened cooperation between the two since the mid-20thcentury has resulted in a plateau in these improvements. Though sanitation is no longer the problem it was, links between health outcomes and community environment for disadvantaged communities is still largely ignored. 

In the heyday of the interdisciplinary approach, the poorest communities were the target of most reforms, aiming to create a basic standard of city living for everyone. This changed as medical science advanced and researchers’ focuses shifted away from specific communities which displayed particular susceptibility to contamination and disease. In a 2013 article in the American Journal of Public Health, Jason Corburn described a shift in medical practice in the second half of the 20th century in which “clinicians increasingly implemented public health … addressing the “hosts” (e.g., individuals) of disease, because the “environment” (e.g., the world outside of microorganisms) was harder for physicians to influence.” In other words, since public health officials were not able to wipe out inequality in order to give everyone an equal chance at good health, they decided to ignore the impact of environment in health outcomes, effectively discarding the social variable in their research.

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