Celebrating 50 Years of Healthy Cities at UC Berkeley!
The College of Environmental Design and the School of Public Health are excited to celebrate the 50th anniversary of students pursuing concurrent Masters of City Planning (MCP) and Masters of Public Health (MPH) degrees. Over the past five decades dozens of students have pursued their training in these overlapping fields and gone on to excel as leaders in a diverse array of fields.
The Center for Global Healthy Cities/IURD is currently sponsoring an student-led initiative to document the history of this unique interdisciplinary academic program. The goal of the project, which will include a new website highlighting alumni stories, is to reflect on the program's history, explore how these fields have evolved over the past 50 years, and celebrate alumni accomplishments. In addition, the project seeks to explore how research and practice at the intersection of the city planning and public health fields has evolved over the past five decades, and looks ahead to the next generation of professionals who will work on the significant urban health and equity challenges our communities face.
The “50 Years of Healthy Cities” initiative also celebrates the legacy of two exceptional CED/SPH faculty members central to the MCP+MPH program, Drs. Len Duhl and Bill Satariano. Dr. Duhl, who passed away in 2019, was a world-renowned psychiatrist and urban health scholar who is best known as the “father” of the global Healthy Cities Movement. Dr. Satariano, who passed away in 2017, was an epidemiologist who researched the impacts of the built environment on health, particularly in regards to healthy aging and physical activity. Both professors served as directors for MCP+MPH program during their time at Berkeley and mentored countless students who are now practitioners working in the fields of city planning and public health.
Please stay tuned for the project website, to be launched winter 2021!
We welcome questions, comments and input from our Berkeley community. Please contact Honora Montano, MCP+MPH ‘21, honoramontano@berkeley.edu
We are also planning to schedule a celebration in 2021, pending conditions - details forthcoming!
As part of this project we have been conducting interviews with MCP+MPH alumni and faculty. Here are a few previews:
The College of Environmental Design and the School of Public Health are excited to celebrate the 50th anniversary of students pursuing concurrent Masters of City Planning (MCP) and Masters of Public Health (MPH) degrees. Over the past five decades dozens of students have pursued their training in these overlapping fields and gone on to excel as leaders in a diverse array of fields.
The Center for Global Healthy Cities/IURD is currently sponsoring an student-led initiative to document the history of this unique interdisciplinary academic program. The goal of the project, which will include a new website highlighting alumni stories, is to reflect on the program's history, explore how these fields have evolved over the past 50 years, and celebrate alumni accomplishments. In addition, the project seeks to explore how research and practice at the intersection of the city planning and public health fields has evolved over the past five decades, and looks ahead to the next generation of professionals who will work on the significant urban health and equity challenges our communities face.
The “50 Years of Healthy Cities” initiative also celebrates the legacy of two exceptional CED/SPH faculty members central to the MCP+MPH program, Drs. Len Duhl and Bill Satariano. Dr. Duhl, who passed away in 2019, was a world-renowned psychiatrist and urban health scholar who is best known as the “father” of the global Healthy Cities Movement. Dr. Satariano, who passed away in 2017, was an epidemiologist who researched the impacts of the built environment on health, particularly in regards to healthy aging and physical activity. Both professors served as directors for MCP+MPH program during their time at Berkeley and mentored countless students who are now practitioners working in the fields of city planning and public health.
Please stay tuned for the project website, to be launched winter 2021!
We welcome questions, comments and input from our Berkeley community. Please contact Honora Montano, MCP+MPH ‘21, honoramontano@berkeley.edu
We are also planning to schedule a celebration in 2021, pending conditions - details forthcoming!
As part of this project we have been conducting interviews with MCP+MPH alumni and faculty. Here are a few previews:
“It was a very interesting time. So the issues of race and class and capitalism and community and change and radical transformation were all sort of in the air. You know, you had to take stands on these issues. How do you bring about change in cities? And what's required - who has power and who doesn't have power?”
-Goldman School of Public Policy Professor Dan Lindheim, on his time in the MCP+MPH program. Lindheim graduated with the first class of dual degree students in 1972.
“If it were up to me, it is absolutely necessary to pair the two disciplines. There needs to be a more robust conversation within planning about social determinants of health because it is that built environment that is creating those inequitable outcomes… And in public health, I think we do a pretty good job studying the built environment….But then there's a lack of understanding around the governmental processes….and unfortunately, in public health, you're sort of addressing the outcomes of that planning...In the political sphere, the two fields are very siloed.”
-Mar Velez MCP MPH 2015. Currently Congressional Aide, Office of Congresswoman Barbara Lee, 13th Congressional district, Oakland CA.
“One of the things that I think is most useful about the [MCP MPH] program and the joint way of looking at the world that city planning and public health represent. That integrated perspective can really put meat on the bones of the social determinants of health conversation. It can help turn a description of social ill into a practice of addressing it.”
-Elke Davisonson, MCP MPH 1994. Currently planning and health consultant, Atlanta, Georgia