About these resources
eBooks
Leading Community Based Changes in the Culture of Health in the US
Edited by Claudia S.P. Fernandez and Giselle Corbie-Smith. Chapter 16, Beautiful Ruin: Creating Healthfields, was written by ATSDR's Nation Brownfields Coordinator Laurel Berman through her participation in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leaders Program (2016-2019). The chapter focuses on Navajo Nation Healthfields activities using ATSDR's 5-step Land Reuse Strategy to Safely Reuse Land and Improve Health (5-step Land Reuse Model) and describes some of ATSDR's Healthfields projects and related tools and resources for communities to create their own Healthfields practice.
Land Reuse and Redevelopment: Creating Healthy Communities
Land Reuse and Redevelopment: Creating Healthy Communities is a free textbook and community resource providing guidance on reusing land safely. Each section of the book is written by land reuse stakeholders highlighting how ATSDR's 5-step Land Reuse Strategy is implemented in best practices. It also highlights how safe land reuse can contribute to community resilience, partnerships, and sustainability.
Brownfields & Reuse Opportunity Working Network (BROWN)
The ATSDR Brownfields & Reuse Opportunity Working Network (BROWN) is a coalition of stakeholders with a wide range of expertise in redevelopment. These ATSDR partners help our National Brownfields/Land Reuse Health Initiative reach out to more communities to integrate health in redevelopment
Taking Action: Rebuilding Joplin after the Tornado
Using the ATSDR Brownfields / Land Revitalization Action Model Green Complete Streets in the 20th Street Corridor Joplin, MO / January, 2014 The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Brownfields/ Land Revitalization Action Model is a framework for community revitalization projects. The Joplin 20th Street Corridor Action Model characterizes existing conditions and highlights community revitalization efforts in the corridor, especially as those conditions relate to human health.
Reclaiming Brownfields: A Comparative Analysis of Adaptive Reuse of Contaminated Properties (2012)
Edited by Richard C. Hula, Laura A. Reese and Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore. Chapter 12,From Blighted Brownfields to Healthy and Sustainable Communities: Tracking Performance and Measuring Outcomeswas written by ATSDR's National Brownfields Coordinator Laurel Berman and Christopher A. DeSousa, Terri Linder, and David Misky, all of whom were partners on a community health and brownfields project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The chapter examines issues and efforts aimed at linking brownfields redevelopment to public health and sustainability via benchmarking and indicator reporting.
Leading Change for Healthy Communities and Successful Land Reuse (Nov 2010)
Leading Change for Healthy Communities and Successful Land Reuse is a series of case studies or "success stories" showing redevelopment to achieve a variety of health-related goals: recreation/greenspace; quality, affordable housing; access to health care, community policing, and other services; education; revitalization of tribal lands; and new jobs and economic development to benefit the community. Each case study tells a story of how community health was successfully integrated into brownfields redevelopment and land reuse, highlighting key elements such as leadership, financing and other resources tapped, stakeholder involvement, actions taken, measures of success, and lessons learned.
Journal Articles
Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment in the European Union: An Overview of Policy and Funding Frameworks
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8959022/
ATSDR's Land Reuse Program partnership with the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) led to the creation of a free course, the Environmental Health and Land Reuse (EHLR) Certificate Program. The course classroom modality was created in 2019 and ATSDR and NEHA launched the EHLR online Certificate in 2020. The Journal is pleased to feature this column to highlight an example of how the EHLR Certificate Program was used to build understanding and increase knowledge on this important topic within Dine' College's summer interns studying environmental health.
JEH Issue: December 2019 | National Environmental Health Association: NEHA
In 2018, ATSDR published in the Journal of Environmental Health about the updated land reuse tool:
Land Reuse Site Screening Tool Cohorts: Creating Land Reuse Site Inventories, available at https://www.neha.org/publications/journal-environmental-health/jeh-issue-september-2018
Reprinted with permission from the Journal of Environmental Health, December 2012, (Volume 75, Number 5, pp 30-34), a publication of the National Environmental Health Association.
Brownfields and land reuse sites are formerly used industrial, commercial, and residential properties stigmatized by real or perceived contamination. The effects of blight and potential contamination associated with these sites can weigh heavily on communities. Communities with multiple brownfields tend to have multiple public health issues. This article describes the ATSDR Brownfields/ Land Revitalization Action Model, a resource designed to integrate public health in redevelopment by creating community-driven health status indicators.
ATSDR Brownfields/Land-Reuse Site Tool (Dec 2010)
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Brownfields/ Land-Reuse Site Tool ("ATSDR Site Tool") was developed to meet the needs of local health departments' request for a tool with rapid site inventory capabilities, including site history, proposed use, contaminants, and future use. This tool was the result of a local public health department survey and includes a robust set of features such as a site inventory, site visit, citizen concerns call log, multiple chemical dose calculator, and document repository. This tool enhances what is available and it is free, cost-effective, and helps protects public health. This article is published in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of Environmental Health.
Improving Community Health: Brownfields and Health Monitoring (Sept 2009)
Environmental Practice, Volume 11, Issue 03, September 2009. Community health monitoring can improve public health in brownfields communities. Examples of health monitoring activities include asthma or blood lead level screening, reviewing health statistics, environmental testing, and evaluation of community-specific health concerns. While health monitoring is encouraged as an activity within US EPA Brownfields funding, the number of communities that implement health monitoring programs is low. To encourage more communities to implement health monitoring activities, with or without Brownfields funding, this paper describes several projects by health agencies and communities that represent best practice examples.
Reports
Community Health Monitoring: Baraboo Ringling Riverfront Development (Aug 2010)
The Baraboo Brownfields/Land Revitalization Action Model incorporated health monitoring goals and was used to focus on community issues and associated health outcomes that can be tracked over time to indicate changes in community health status. This report documents the results of the current community health conditions in the Baraboo Ringling Riverfront Redevelopment project area through 33 different baseline measurement indicators. The City of Baraboo intends to create a 'living' document from this report so that community members can have access to project outcomes at all times through print versions provided to the local library and a report to be maintained on the City's Web site. Both ATSDR and the City of Baraboo hope this report will also serve as a model for other communities undergoing revitalization.
This report documents current conditions in the 30th Street Corridor in 2008 through a series of baseline measures. The information in this report assisted the Corridor Development Community to make redevelopment decisions and may be revisited in future years to quantify the different ways that redevelopment activities might have contributed to changes in the health and quality of life among 30th Street Corridor residents. ATSDR and our Milwaukee partners hope this report will serve as a model for other communities undergoing redevelopment.