Healthy development measurement tool

The Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT), developed by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, provides an approach for evaluating land use planning and urban development with regards to the achievement of human health needs. The HDMT provides a set of baseline data on community health metrics for San Francisco and development targets to assess the extent to which urban development projects and plans can improve community health. The HDMT also provides a range of policy and design strategies that can advance health conditions and resources via the development process.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, between the mid- and late- 1990’s, the bustling information economy brought multitudes of young people to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley’s technology-inspired new economy. Housing was notoriously difficult to find, with vacancy rates at less than 2%. During this period, average rents increased by 30% and the cost to buy increased dramatically. Although the economic recession triggered by the dot-com bubble brought the city’s vacancy rates to pre-boom levels, the Bay Area continued to encounter pressure for new housing development due to extraordinary levels of unmet demand and its high profitability. This phenomenon occurred elsewhere in California and throughout the country, in both urban and suburban settings.

Historically, health inequities were associated with differences in health behaviors and health care access and utilization. Today, however, many believe that these inequities result from differences in access to the social, economic and environmental resources necessary for health. Increasingly, inter-disciplinary research demonstrates that the root causes of disease and illness, as well as strategies to improve health and well-being are dependent on community design, land use, and transportation. Changes in societal conditions can affect many individuals simultaneously, and have broad and diverse impacts on multiple health outcomes.

The value of this tool is that it focuses on broadening the range of social, economic, and environmental resources needed for health on a population level. It does so by recognizing a range of resources needed for optimal health at the societal level and identifying measurable and actionable ways to meet those needs through urban development. It combines quantitative analysis of health indicators with a qualitative assessment of whether plans and projects meet tool development targets.

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