Parks are a key feature of the built environment that foster community engagement, make communities vibrant, and support resident wellbeing. This study, built on our prior work on Design Thinking in Parks and the PARCS Study, will test the impact on community-level health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) and mental health of a community-engaged, community-level intervention that aims to improve park-based health and social programming.
The Center, under the leadership of Dr. Terry Huang and Dr. Nasim Sabounchi, is a leading component of the New York consortium of HCS, in partnership with Columbia University School of Social Work and other local institutions, to undertake a community-engaged intervention to reduce opioid overdose and deaths across 16 counties in New York State.
Parks are a key feature of the built environment that foster community engagement, make communities vibrant, and support resident wellbeing. This study, built on our prior work on Design Thinking in Parks and the PARCS Study, will test the impact on community-level health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) and mental health of a community-engaged, community-level intervention that aims to improve park-based health and social programming.
The Design Thinking for Parks initiative applies co-creation and co-design methods to assess New York City communities’ use of their local parks. Community members were invited to participate in a series of co-creation workshops to discuss the value of local parks and strategies to increase park usage in their respective communities.
This transdiscplinary initiative integrates public health and architecture to provide new best practice school design guidelines to promote healthy behaviors and lifestyles. The work has informed the health and design pillar of the American Institute of Architects and a prototype school has been built in Virginia. More details of the products and publications from this work can be seen here.