Our Ailing Communities

"Public-health advocate Richard Jackson argues that the way we build cities and neighborhoods is the source of many chronic diseases . . . There are few things more delicious professionally than finding a well-­credentialed expert from another field—perhaps one that is better trusted than one’s own, such as medicine—who has dedicated his life’s work to proving everything you’ve been arguing for years."



"...It’s 95 degrees out, 95 percent humidity. I see a woman on the right shoulder [of the road], struggling along, and she reminds me of my mother. She’s in her seventies, with reddish hair and bent over with osteoporosis. She has a shopping bag in each hand and is really struggling. . . This woman stayed in my mind during the whole discussion we were having about the future of public health. . .“If that poor woman had collapsed from heat stroke, we docs would have written the cause of death as heat stroke and not lack of trees and public transportation, poor urban form, and heat-island effects . . . Here I was focusing on remote disease risks when the biggest risks that people faced were coming from the built environment."