Residents of the world’s most polluted city—New Delhi, in case you were still wondering—can now find out exactly how toxic the air in their neighbourhood is. [...]

“People are clueless about the air they are breathing. If there is fog, they think it might be pollution,” he said. “People will have this information on their fingertips now.” [...]

While the government figures out a way to bring pollution under control, this app could help people buy time. — qz.com

Using tracer viruses, researchers found that contamination of just a single doorknob or table top results in the spread of viruses throughout office buildings, hotels, and health care facilities. Within 2 to 4 hours, the virus could be detected on 40 to 60 percent of workers and visitors in the facilities and commonly touched objects. — ScienceDaily

Marshall, Garrick and Piatkowski are talking about a different set of health concerns: not communicable diseases like cholera, but lifestyle diseases like diabetes. "The literature suggests," they write, "that the shift in industrialized nations toward a more sedentary lifestyle is linked to increasingly auto-dependent lifestyles, which in turn is linked to lower density developments and auto-friendly land uses." Maybe we're designing places, in other words, that make it harder to be active. — washingtonpost.com

You won’t find any stairwells tucked away into the dark corners of George Washington University’s newest academic building.

That’s because those stairs have literally taken center stage in the $75 million Milken Institute School of Public Health — designed by Boston-based Payette Architects and D.C.-based Ayers Saint Gross Architects [...] one of the first things visitors see upon entering the 115,000 square-foot building are the staircases winding every which way up a seven-story atrium. — bizjournals.com

Our cities are damaging our health – that's the conclusion of a new report by the Royal Institute of British Architects which looks at the impact of the built environment on obesity and life expectancy. It found that the urban conurbations with the healthiest populations [...] had half the density of housing and a fifth more green spaces than the places where people were the most unfit, such as Liverpool (the highest rate of diabetes) and Birmingham (the lowest proportion of active adults). — independent.co.uk

Well-designed places can promote health, and design professionals can create them. Health depends... on wholesome places, not just for individuals, but across entire communities, and health professionals can recognize and support them.

Accordingly, two worlds need to come together: the world of design, in which architects, planners and their colleagues create places; and the world of health, in which doctors, public-health officials and their colleagues fight injury, illness and disability. — seattletimes.com

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) today issued a report: Local Leaders: Healthier Communities Through Design that provides a roadmap for towns and cities looking to help their populations stay healthy by employing design techniques that encourage residents to increase their physical activity. — aia.org

"If exercise and everyday activity is the mantra, how do you, through design, get people to exercise? ... There is a direct relation between the built environment and people's lifestyles."

History has proved it. Architecture played a major role in defeating infectious diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis in the 19th and 20th centuries by designing better buildings, streets, clean-water systems and parks. — usatoday.com

After getting her Masters of Architecture from MIT in 2001, she was an architect for Delson or Sherman, and then was a designer for Fresh, but she gradually started to lose interest in her projects at work.

“I decided I wanted to turn this passion of mine, to give my dog a well-balanced complete meal that made her healthy again, into a full-time job,” Liao said of her decision to quit her job at Fresh almost two years ago to start her own company. — parkslope.patch.com

Once again this December 1st the world's attention turns to the global issue of HIV/AIDS. Typically media coverage focuses on the role of education and redoubling efforts to prevent transmission among at-risk groups. However one aspect of the disease that has received less attention is the extent to which housing conditions affect both the risk of infection and the wellbeing of people living with HIV/AIDS. — globalurbanist.com

It’s like a body brace with a backpack and gizmos that resemble shotguns near the knees. A physical therapist operates a remote control that makes the patient step when their body is properly aligned. — nydailynews.com