BEPHC

^{The Built Environment and Public Health Clearinghouse (BEPHC) is a resource for training at the university and professional levels and a source for relevant news at this critical intersection of community design and health.}

HISTORY

The original Built Environment and Public Health Curriculum (BEPHC) was developed as a result of an audience member’s question at the 2006 American Public Health Association Annual Conference. The questioner asked for a description of a model planning and public health university-level curriculum following a presentation of select classes on this topic. The nontrivial question led Professor Nisha Botchwey’s exploration and creation of a multidisciplinary curriculum in planning and public health. In 2009, with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Botchwey launched the Built Environment and Public Health Curriculum, which housed much of the resources used to create the model course. “A Model Curriculum for a Course on the Built Environment and Public Health” was published by Botchwey and colleagues a few months later in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. This early stage of the Curriculum website provided resources primarily to the planning academy for development of planning and public health courses. However, anecdotally, academics from architecture, landscape architecture, and transportation began using these resources for educating students in their disparate disciplines.