Person sat on hilltop looking over green land and winding road below ways of working

Reflective Learning from a Paid Internship

Catrin Lyddon is a researcher and practitioner with a Masters of Research in the field of health from Swansea University.  Here she reflects on a paid internship at Urban Habitats.  This was made possible through funding from Welsh Government and with Swansea University with a specific focus on supporting graduates from groups who face barriers to employment. In line with Urban Habitats’ commitment to creating good work in local places the internship was paid above the level of the Real Living Wage.

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Mountain road with hillside and rainbow against grey sky community

Creating health in the Afan Valley

During a four-month internship at Urban Habitats, I have gained a greater understanding of public health approaches to community wellbeing and the significant role of the built and natural environment in creating health.  In this blog I reflect on these approaches in relation to my own community in the Afan Valley which is not an urban or city location but rather a series of dispersed communities in the South Wales Valleys.  Do these approaches hold for these communities and what can be learned from these communities about creating health and wellbeing?

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Colourful photo of tools like sticky notes, screw driver, pliers on a black background. wellbeing

Healthy communities: tools, guidance, and metrics

Does the world need another toolkit?!

When we think about how to support health in communities and how practitioners in the built environment can ultimately help create healthier developments there seems to be an array of toolkits available.   Yet how do we know which one to use?  It becomes quite difficult to understand which tool is best suited to any given project.  This session chaired by Urban Habitats’ director Mark Drane at the Healthy City Design Congress explored precisely this question.

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Protest placard - love (crossed out) CO2 is in the air wellbeing

Can breathing buildings create a public health revolution?

The Historical Burden of Shared Air and the Future of Indoor Air Quality

What we breathe impacts our health, and with gaps in knowledge about air quality and public health, we need more data in this area.  We also need to consider the implications of Covid-19 which has highlighted that people can themselves generate contaminated air as well as toxins more usually considered in building design.

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