Infrastructure is Public Health

Infrastructure is the backbone of a healthy community.
Parent and children riding bikes through a park.

Investing in infrastructure that supports health and wellbeing is key to making communities healthier, more equitable places to live.

Every community should be a place where people can live their healthiest lives. Regardless of race or income, everyone should have access to safe drinking water, parks and green gathering places, and safe roads, sidewalks, and transportation options. 

But today, this is not everyone’s reality. For decades, a lack of funding and poor-quality or failing infrastructure—often in communities that are home to more people of color and people with lower incomes—have created barriers to good health.

When leaders and residents make improving the infrastructure in our communities a priority, the people who live there will have an opportunity to thrive.

Water

This collection of research offers insights into how to close the gap in access to affordable and safe water.

Parks and Green Spaces

The national funding initiative People, Parks and Power and research from City Parks Alliance and the National Recreation and Parks Association are advancing equitable investment in parks and green infrastructure.

Transportation

This field scan by SmartGrowth America dives into how transportation affects health equity in America.

StoryCorps: Communities Building a New Path Forward

Listen to the voices of community leaders across the United States talking about their love for their communities and the solutions they’re working toward to right the past harms caused by transportation policy that ripped their neighborhoods and sacred spaces apart.

Explore the Stories
Grantee Resource

Pillars, Policies, And Plausible Pathways Linking Digital Inclusion And Health Equity

Digital inclusion and health equity are connected through direct and indirect pathways. Strengthening both pathways create conditions for people to use the internet to thrive.

Read the Health Affairs brief

Related Perspectives

RWJF staff members share examples of infrastructure at work. 

  • Brooke Tucker, program officer

  • James Hardy, senior program officer

  • Julie Morita, former executive vice president

  • Pamela Russo, former senior program officer

Related Content

Health in Small and Midsize Cities

RWJF is supporting the efforts of small and midsize cities across the nation to develop solutions that effectively leverage local resources and strengths.

Learn more
Man sitting at edge of stream.

Grantee Story

The Gift of Water: How Communities Are Sharing Traditional Techniques to Combat Drought

In drought-prone areas, communities are incorporating green infrastructure to harvest and reuse scarce water, often drawing on the ancient knowledge and wisdom of indigenous practices.

Air and Water Quality
SEUD Illustration
Research

Global Ideas: Lessons on Sustainable and Equitable Urban Development

To foster healthy and vibrant places for both people and the planet, urban development will need to be sustainable, and it will only be sustainable if it is equity-driven.
Built Environment and Health Global Learning Climate Change & Climate Action
A group of men in hard hats working on a construction project under a beautiful blue sky.
News Release

Impact Investments to Improve Health Equity

RWJF expanded our commitment to impact investing with an allocation of $325 million to advance health equity in communities that have faced a historic lack of investment.
Health Disparities Infrastructure & Energy
A man and young boy stand together outside smiling.
Brief

Increasing Community Resilience for Climate-Related Events

Green infrastructure, like parks, street trees, and shrubs on rooftops, improves air quality, reduces flooding and heat islands, improves water quality, and promotes community resilience in the face of extreme weather.
Public and Community Health Policy and Law Climate Change & Climate Action
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