Official HealthyPlan.City Release | November 28, 2023 | 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. (EST)

The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE) and the HealthyDesign.City teams are excited to announce the release of the new version of the HealthyPlan.city tool on November 28, 2023.
HealthyPlan.City is a free web mapping application that helps users identify environmental inequity in over 125 Canadian cities. The tool leverages nationally standardized environmental data and demographic data from the Canadian Census to map out neighbourhoods where relatively higher proportions of vulnerable populations experience worse environmental conditions. A preliminary version of the tool focussing on heat islands and tree canopy cover was made publicly available in summer 2022. This release of the tool includes multiple improvements such as:
  • Eight additional vulnerable population indicators from the 2021 Canadian Census
  • Ten additional built environment indicators such as air pollution, proximity to parks, proximity to transit stops, and flood susceptibility
  • An improved user interface; and
  • New data visualization functionalities
In this webinar, HealthyPlan.City co-directors Jeff Brook and Dany Doiron will provide an overview of the data and functionalities included in the new version of the HealthyPlan.City tool. Dr. Sarah Viehbeck, Chief Science Officer of the Public Health Agency of Canada will give opening remarks with closing remarks from Dr. Sonia Anand, Professor of Medicine & Epidemiology at McMaster University.

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CURRENT NEWS

Spotlight: Dan Fuller

Dr. Daniel Fuller is a Canada Research Chair in Population Physical Activity and assistant professor in the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation at Memorial University. His research with CANUE is developing new Canadian indicators of urban sprawl, public transit accessibility, and active living environments.  

“My ultimate goal is a physically active Canadian population” says Dr. Fuller.

With that ambitious goal, is a motivated team of student researchers to match. Hui (Henry) Luan, Kassia Orychock, Javad Rahimipour Anaraki, and Melissa Tobin work alongside Dr. Fuller, to contribute to CANUE’s vision of increasing scientific understanding of the interactions among the physical features of the urban environment and health.  

“Our research is developing new, standardized, Canada-wide measures for urban environments. We are working with many Canadian researchers who are contributing their expertise to this large national initiative.”

Along with Dr. Michael Widener at the University of Toronto, we are also developing measures of food accessibility, and beginning discussions to develop measures of gentrification.

Connect with Dr. Fuller on TwitterFacebook, or check out Walkabilly.ca and beaplab.com.

Spotlight: Marianne Hatzopoulou

Marianne co-leads the Transportation group within CANUE. The main objective of the transportation group is to generate traffic volumes on road networks for various Canadian cities. The team is using various approaches including travel demand and network assignment models as well as statistical interpolation techniques.

Marianne Hatzopoulou is Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Transportation and Air Quality. Her expertise is in modelling road transport emissions and urban air quality, as well as evaluating population exposure to air pollution. Her research aims to capture the interactions between the daily activities and travel patterns of urban dwellers and the generation and dispersion of traffic emissions in urban environments. She has linked various traffic simulation models with tools for microscopic emission estimates and has published in the areas of traffic emission modeling, near-road air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions from transport. Prof. Hatzopoulou serves on the National Academy of Science Transportation Research Board committees on “Transportation and Air Quality” and “Environmental Analysis in Transportation”.

University of Toronto profile

STUDENT TRAVEL AWARDS

Congratulations to our student travel award recipients!

IN THE NEWS…

 

The journal Epidemiology recently interviewed study co-author and CANUE member Dan Crouse about exposure to fine particulate matter and diabetes in the Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohort.

Pinault, Lauren, Michael Brauer, Daniel L. Crouse, Scott Weichenthal, Anders Erickson, Aaron van Donkelaar, Randall V. Martin et al. “Diabetes Status and Susceptibility to the Effects of PM2. 5 Exposure on Cardiovascular Mortality in a National Canadian Cohort.” Epidemiology 29, no. 6 (2018): 784-794.

GSC Spring Meeting Webinar

 

CANUE member Dr. Michael Jerrett presents at the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine – Geographical Sciences Committee Meeting, May 2018. Hear Dr. Jerrett’s thoughts on how we deal with individual movements through time and space, what that means for environmental exposures, and how we capture data to characterize exposures for health studies.