Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Public Health

Doctors’ Note Says Complete Streets Are Vital to New York’s Health

By Brad Aaron | Sep 22, 2011 | 4 Comments

Transportation Alternatives and the New York Chapter of the American Association of Family Physicians today released a letter to Mayor Bloomberg, signed by 140 medical professionals from a broad spectrum of specialties, praising the city’s bike and pedestrian infrastructure as essential to the health of New Yorkers. It’s a solid counterweight to the hysteria surrounding […]

Fact: Places With High Numbers of Cyclists Are Safer for Pedestrians

By Ben Fried | Sep 21, 2011 | 19 Comments

I’ve got a question for the purported defenders of pedestrian safety who sit on the editorial boards at the Daily News and the Post. I know they haven’t shown much interest in preventing the 10,000+ injuries and 150+ fatalities that motorists inflict on pedestrians in New York City each year, but the new Hunter College […]

Traffic Still the Top Injury-Related Killer of NYC Kids

By Noah Kazis | Sep 13, 2011 | 5 Comments

Every year, the Department of Health releases a report on the injuries that kill NYC children [PDF]. And every year, the grim statistics show traffic to be the single largest cause of injury-related death among kids. Between 2001 and 2009, 1,681 children under 13 years old died in New York City, 324 of them from […]

Health Dept: New Yorkers Get Their Exercise By Getting Around Town

By Noah Kazis | May 20, 2011 | 4 Comments

The New York City Department of Health is out with a new bulletin [PDF] articulating the public health benefits of walking, biking, and taking transit. Encouraging those modes — and curbing the amount we drive — will reduce deaths and injuries from traffic crashes, prevent lung disease by lowering exposure to air pollution, and improve […]

STREETSBLOG USA

This Is Your Brain on Cars—Oh, and Your Lungs and Heart and Gut, Too

By Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez | May 17, 2011 | No Comments

Gerontologists in a laboratory at the University of Southern California exposed a group of mice to the same atmospheric conditions that humans encounter when driving along the freeway. Horrifyingly, they discovered that the mice’s brains showed the kind of swelling and inflammation associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The researchers didn’t super-dose to get these […]

STREETSBLOG LA

The Federal Transportation Bill Is a Health Care Bill

By Richard J. Jackson | Mar 3, 2011 | No Comments

Dr. Richard J. Jackson is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Science in the UCLA School of Public Health. On February 23, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative John Mica held a congressional hearing here in Los Angeles to discuss the federal transportation bill. The dominant theme of the hearing was expanding and establishing federal financing […]

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