Media & Policy Center
Projects Health Care Public Space / Public Health America's Children And Thou Shalt Honor Getting Around Public Affairs Being Creative in Philadelphia Edens Lost & Found Edens Town Hall Meetings Public Affairs America's Family Farmers If I Were President Bitter Tears Transportation Envy Education Education For Social Action Which Way American Education?

The Media & Policy Center has received a significant grant to begin work on America's Family Farmers. Production of the series will begin in the summer of 2008.

Harry Wiland's 1969 film production Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music will be broadcast as part of PBS's P.O.V. series on August 5, 2008. More on Harry's work with Johnny Cash can be found here.

Harry Wiland and Dale Bell have received California Greenworks' Environmental Leaders Award for their "...outstanding work in raising awareness for environmental sustainability through the PBS series Edens Lost & Found."

The first in a series of Edens Lost & Found Town Hall Meetings was held in Philadelphia early in 2008, and was broadcast by WHYY (Philadelphia PBS) in April. More details and excerpts from the broadcast are available here.

Harry Wiland and Dale Bell have been elected Ashoka Fellows and Purpose Prize Fellows.

Harry Wiland and Dale Bell win First and Third Prizes in NAAEE Environmental Film Festival.

Media & Policy Center: Public Space / Public Health

In Development

For many Americans, the drive from work or school to home is all too familiar: it begins with a long, multi-lane road infamous for its strip malls, lack of sidewalks, and high pedestrian fatality rates. It progresses to a jumble of connecting interstate highways packed with rush-hour traffic. And it ends with clusters of new, low-density, single-family residential developments lacking public parks, playgrounds, libraries, nearby stores or cafés, sidewalks, bicycle trails, and public transit. In much of this country, adults and children travel by private automobile to virtually all of their destinations, because they have no practical transportation alternatives. In poor communities, adults often rely on inadequate public transportation to get to work. Their children end up walking through unsafe neighborhoods to get to school.

Public health has traditionally addressed the "built environment" to tackle specific health issues such as sanitation, lead paint, workplace safety, fire codes, and access for persons with disabilities. We now realize that how we design the built environment may hold tremendous potential for addressing many of the nation's greatest current public health concerns, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, injury, depression, violence, and social inequities. Almost everything in our built environment is the way it is because someone designed it that way. We still have a remarkable capacity to plan ahead, shape the future, and adapt to new settings. This series will offer best practice examples that will inform the building of safer, more beautiful and healthier communities.

Public Space/Public Health, a new public television documentary series and public health outreach initiative, will explore how communities across the country are re-thinking and redesigning their built environments. More and more American communities are looking at the direct correlation of green public spaces and improved public health. The PBS series will be supported by a nationwide community-based outreach and publicity/promotion campaign, interactive web site, educational curricula for elementary school through college, a companion book, video resource library, and more.

Other resources for Public Space/Public Health: