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Healthy Places: Planning and public health learning together

This exciting pilot project involved the UCC School of Public Health and the Department of Planning staff and students, for the first time, collaborating with international expert Marcus Grant, to test teaching and learning methods in an interactive workshop, including Health Impact Assessment and Place Standard Tool, with a view to develop future co-teaching projects.

Modern town planning emerged in response to public health concerns from over 200 years ago, such as air quality, disease, and clean water, particularly in industrial urban areas. The link between public health and planning is still as important today, yet, often in academia and practice the two disciplines are siloed. This project sought to bring planning and public health students and staff together in an interdisciplinary project to learn together from a global expert in this field, Marcus Grant. Marcus worked with Jeanette Fitzsimons and Monica O’Mullane to design a world cafe style workshop on 11th May 2026, which focused on each facilitator’s research experience and strengths. Marcus introduced the topic and highlighted the benefits of working together for healthy places before students from both disciplines considered how healthy an edge of city neighbourhood in Cork city centre is, using three tools Health Impact Assessment (led by Monica), Place Standard Tool (led by Jeanette) and the Health Map led by Marcus. Overall, feedback from the students highlighted that they thoroughly enjoyed the interactive nature of the workshop, they loved working with students from a different but associated discipline, and would highly recommend future co-learning in this format.

The workshop was opened with enthusiasm by Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan, Deputy Director of ISS21 and Prof John Browne, Director of UCC Future of Health, was also in attendance in support of the interdisciplinary work.

A Cork City Council planner also attended the workshop and was very encouraging of the applied research and practical component of the workshop.

The following day, Marcus presented an overview of his vast experience on UCC campus (and online) at his public talk on 12th May, entitled 'Healthy Placemaking- The value and challenges of advancing health through urban planning and design.' Professor Maggie O’Neill, Director of ISS21, warmly opened Marcus’ talk, reiterating the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations, as is demonstrated in the Healthy Places project, in facing and preparing for society’s polycrises. This presentation was attended by many participants from across planning, public health, community engagement and beyond. Marcus’ presentation was recorded and is available here https://media.heanet.ie/page/2538fc175a914d849fdd3c170a328a47 

Monica and Jeanette are very thankful to the funders of this project, including the HEA SATLE fund, UCC OVPLT and UCC CIRTL, Collective Social Futures, and to the HRB HIA-IM project for support.

For more on this story contact:

Jeanette Fitzsimons, Department of Planning UCC (jeanette.fitzsimons@ucc.ie) and Monica O'Mullane, School of Public Health UCC (m.omullane@ucc.ie)