This course, Healthy Housing & Built Environment, is a graduate-level online course required for certain online Master of Public Health Programs. A previous revamping of this course added new emphasis on themes of environmental justice and health disparities. Inspired and informed by the Climate Pedagogy Incubator, this further revamp will incorporate themes of climate change and climate justice specifically, which are highly interrelated to current and future challenges related to healthy housing and the built environment.
This course examines how housing and the built environment intersect to shape health outcomes and health disparities. Students will explore two interrelated domains: housing and the built environment, each shaped by climate change and systemic inequities. In the housing domain, they will examine pathways of harmful exposures such as indoor heat, mold, energy insecurity, and displacement risks, along with social and historical drivers of housing vulnerability and future implications of climate change. In the built environment domain, students will evaluate factors like urban heat islands, air pollution, transportation design, and land use planning. Across both domains, students will analyze community-led strategies and policies aimed at climate resilience and justice. Through evidence appraisal, policy analysis, and weighing of trade-offs, students will integrate climate justice principles into place-based public health practice.
Learning Objective 1: Identify aspects of housing and the built environment that affect health and well-being, pathways through which populations are affected, and threats to health and housing justice from climate change.
Learning Objective 2: Appraise strength of evidence linking housing or built environment exposures to specific health outcomes, as well as attribution and projections of exposures to climate change.
Learning Objective 3: Analyze systemic barriers—social, economic, legal—that impede health benefits of housing and built environment change, perpetuate inequities in housing and health, and hinder the benefits of climate adaptation efforts.
Learning Objective 4: Design complementary, scalable, and justice-centered strategies to amplify the health benefits of climate-resilient housing or built environment interventions.