PLAN4Health Colorado

About PLAN4Health Colorado

PLAN4Health Colorado is a statewide initiative connecting public health and planning professionals to create healthier communities. Rooted in the work of the Health+Design Initiative at CU Denver and the Colorado Healthy Places Collaborative, PLAN4Health Colorado provides resources, training, and network support for communities seeking to embed health into local planning practice.

The initiative recognizes a fundamental truth: planning decisions shape health outcomes. Where we locate housing, how we design streets, whether neighborhoods have access to parks, fresh food, clean air, and transit — all of these are planning decisions, and all of them affect the health of community residents. PLAN4Health Colorado helps planners and communities act on this understanding with practical tools and professional support.

Key Activities

Health in Planning Tools

PLAN4Health Colorado promotes the use of health-based planning tools, including the Health Assessment Lens developed by HDI. These tools help local governments and planners systematically assess health conditions, identify opportunities for health-integrated design, and evaluate the health implications of specific planning decisions.

Professional Development

Through workshops, webinars, and training sessions, PLAN4Health Colorado builds practitioner capacity for health-integrated planning. Sessions are tailored for professional audiences including certified planners, public health professionals, architects, landscape architects, and community leaders.

Community Partnerships

PLAN4Health Colorado supports communities in identifying local health priorities and connecting with the tools and resources needed to address them. This includes facilitating community health assessments, supporting comprehensive plan updates that integrate health, and connecting communities to the Colorado Healthy Places Collaborative network.

Policy and Advocacy

Beyond individual communities, PLAN4Health Colorado engages in statewide policy conversations about the role of planning in health promotion. This includes advocacy for health-in-all-policies approaches, support for health equity provisions in state planning legislation, and engagement with regional planning bodies on health-related planning standards.

The Planning-Health Connection in Colorado

Colorado communities face a range of health challenges with roots in planning decisions: automobile dependence and lack of walkable neighborhoods, limited access to fresh food in lower-income areas, air quality impacts from transportation and industrial land uses, housing instability and its downstream health consequences, and the health effects of rapid growth and displacement in cities like Denver.

At the same time, Colorado has significant strengths to build on: strong outdoor recreation traditions, a growing public health workforce, active planning and design professional associations, and a foundation of community health organizations committed to equity. PLAN4Health Colorado helps connect these assets and direct them toward places and people most in need of investment.