Human ecology and public health

Age-Friendly Cities in Latin America: A Human Ecological Framework

Despite the demographic aging of Latin America, the uptake of the WHO's Age-Friendly Cities Framework remains extremely low, with the notable exceptions of Chile, Mexico and Brazil. We argue for a broader human ecological framework, which focuses on the macro, meso and micro levels, to better address the context, challenges and opportunities for age-friendly cities in the Latin American region. The WHO's age-friendly city domains are primarily at the meso (community) scale, with a focus on built environment, services and participation. We call for more attention to be paid to the macro policy scale to address concerns regarding migration, demography and social policy context. More attention also should be given to the micro scale to recognize the critical role of family and informal care supports. It is possible that the WHO domains are the result of a design bias, with Global North settings in mind for their development. We find the domains of UNICEF's Child-Friendly Cities Initiative, which give more attention to the realities of the Global South, helpful to broaden the WHO's Age-Friendly Cities Framework.

Healthy Places for Children: The Critical Role of Engagement, Common Vision, and Collaboration

Planning plays a critical role in promoting healthy communities for children. We conducted a national survey of United States (US) cities and counties in 2019 and found only half of the 1312 responding communities report they give attention to the needs of children in their community plans. Those that do, provide more services and have more child-friendly zoning codes. We use a human ecological framework to build structural equation models of child-friendly zoning and services. We find communities with more engagement of families with children and youth and a common vision across generational, race, and ethnic lines report higher levels of child-friendly zoning and services. Collaboration between health providers and schools builds trust and leads to more services. However, child-friendly zoning is lower in communities with higher child poverty, and in suburbs and rural areas. Our results support a dynamic human ecological model where the processes of collaboration, inclusion, and engagement are key to creating healthy places for children. These processes may be especially important in addressing the unique challenges of suburban and rural communities.

Conventional and ecological public health

This paper suggests that current models of public health are no longer sufficient as a means for understanding the health challenges of the anthropogenic age, and argues for an alternative based upon an ecological model. The roots of this perspective originated within the Victorian era, although it found only limited expression at that time. Ecological thinking in public health has only been revived relatively recently. Derived from an analysis of obesity, this paper proposes the development of an approach to ecological public health based on four dimensions of existence: the material, the physiological, the social and the cultural-cognitive. The implications for public policy are considered.