A friendly sent me an email regarding a new PBS series that's airing in some markets soon. I contacted WTTW, and they currently have no plans to air it. Check out the links and other info below.
If you're interested in seeing this series and would like WTTW to show it, please send them a message and tell them so. In addition to being a topic of interest to many of us, I think this series could be beneficial in gaining support for the Streets for Cycling initiative outside the community of folks who are already involved.
Designing Healthy Cities PBS Television Series Preview
Dr. Richard Jackson Interview with Tavis Smiley
Here's a portion of the interview transcript:
A leading voice for better urban design for the sake of good health, Dr. Richard Jackson is chair of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA’s School of Public Health. A pediatrician, he’s done extensive work in the environment’s impact on health, particularly relating to children, and served in many leadership positions, including as California State Health Officer and at the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. Jackson is host-narrator of PBS’ 4-hour series, Designing Healthy Communities, and co-author of the companion book of the same name.
TRANSCRIPT
Tavis: Each month this year we are pleased to bring you a conversation about health and healthcare issues as a part of our “Road to Health” series. Tonight we kick off this series with Dr. Richard Jackson.
He is the former director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. He now serves as the chair of the environmental health sciences department at UCLA. He is also the host of the PBS series called “Designing Healthy Communities.” So here now, a preview of “Designing Healthy Communities.”
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Tavis: Let me start by asking a pretty simple question. When you say “designing healthy communities,” how does one go about designing a healthy community?
Jackson: We have essentially built because we’ve tried to meet economic needs. We build because an investor puts something somewhere. But for too long we really haven’t thought about what we build, does it make people healthy?
For a long time I was the director of the National Center for Environmental Health, and I worried about minute things – molecules and toxic substances. I worried about big things – climate change.
About 10 years ago I came to the conclusion that what really impacts people’s health is where they live, the home they’re in, the people they’re with, the community they’re in. For too long we’ve been worrying about things far away or very minute, and it was time to think about designing and building places that worked for people.
Tavis: I suspect – and I’m not naïve here – I suspect that there are certain places in this country that are better to live vis-à-vis health than other places.
Jackson: If you tell me where you live we can tell you how long you’re going to live. In Alameda County, which is Oakland, California, it’s a 15-year lifespan difference between the people in the poor parts of town and the people in the more favored parts of town.
Tavis: Fifteen years.
Jackson: Fifteen years, and we see this over and over again. Being poor, being in environments that have – in pollution, but being in environments that don’t have healthy places where you can buy food, that don’t have green spaces, that don’t have safe places to walk, that’s a risk for your wellbeing and for your lifespan.
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