Disrupting for healthy built environments

How do you foster healthy and just places and spaces through everyday public health work? Listen to this episode to learn from longtime environmental health officer Anita Ely about working in partnership, embedding an intentional health equity lens and creating healthy public policies to foster healthy built environments for all.  Episode guest: Anita Ely is a Certified Public Health Inspector (Canada) working as a Specialist Environmental Health Officer with Interior Health in the southern Interior of BC. She began her career in more well-known health inspector roles such as inspecting restaurants, pools and drinking water systems and investigating potential health hazards. Since 2014 Anita has been focused on protecting populations at community level through the creation and implementation of healthy public policy with community partners that develops built environments that support the physical, social and mental health of community members. This inter-sectoral work is known as healthy built environments. As a 2nd generation white settler Anita is grateful for the stewardship and leadership of Secwépemc Nation on whose unceded, traditional and ancestral territory she has settled and now calls home. Learn more: Healthy Communities (Interior Health) FACT SHEET: Supporting Health Equity Through the Built Environment (BCCDC, 2017) Healthy Built Environment Linkages Toolkit (BCCDC, 2018) Supporting Equity in Planning and Policy Action Guide (BC Healthy Communities, 2020) Kelowna's 2040 Official Community Plan (2022) How to Collaborate With Municipalities: A Practical Guide for Public Health Actors (NCCHPP, 2020) How to Equity in Municipalities (Plamondon & Shahram, 2024) A tool to assess alignment between knowledge and action for health equity (Plamondon, 2020) Let's Talk: Determinants of health (NCCDH, 2024)  Episode credits: This episode was produced by Rebecca Cheff and Pemma Muzumdar (NCCDH). Mind the Disruption is hosted by Pemma Muzumdar and led by Rebecca Cheff, with technical production and original music by Chris Perry. Promotion by Caralyn Vossen (NCCDH). Artwork by comet art + design. Special thanks to Bernice Yanful and Carolina Jimenez for contributing to the development of this season.