Active Transportation , Health, Open Data, and Techies – #TechiesDCHealth Meetup – March 6 2014

To get right to signing up to attend Transportation + Health (#TechiesDCHealth), click here (meetup.com).

At the Center for Total Health (@KPTotalHealth), we are huge fans of technology, when it is used to improve community conditions to produce health. That’s why we’re a special guest, or I should say, the DC/MD/VA Transportation Techies is a special guest at the Center for Total Health, on March 6, 2014:

View TechiesDCHealth at Center for Total Health 37303 on Flickr.com

Reason #1- to come – Transportation and Health are connected

Please join us at the March meetup, themed “Transportation + Health,” because of course the two things are connected (see: From mHealth to Sustainable mobility : DC Transportation Techies Meetup | Ted Eytan, MDfor more background). That’s reason #1 to come.

Reason #2 – Healthiest Meetup ever

A meetup to talk about health (or any meeting) should be healthy, shouldn’t it? We’re here to support a culture around all of the determinants of health, including transportation. That’s what we mean by total health. 
We’ll be catering this one with choices that are healthy, delicious, and provide the right energy to solve challenging problems. You can look at samples from our flickr pool to prepare your palate. 

Reason #3 – Great demos and super cool change agents, like Charlie Denny and Jeff Olson from @altaplanning

The subheading says it all. Alta Planning created the bikeshare systems used in many cities in the United States today; it will be great to connect the users of the data generated by these systems with the leaders who are transforming our communities with them (see: Just Read: The Third Mode: Toward a Green Society, (how engineers impact our health as much as doctors) | Ted Eytan, MD)

Reason #4 – you

Our innovative organizers at Arlington, Virgina’s nationally amazing Mobility Lab (@MobilityLabTeam) and I are discovering that there’s a lot of passion around transportation and health and we think this meetup will connect people to the data and health experts to help our communities embrace active transportation. Here are just a few questions I have…

• What do health care organizations/systems need to do to encourage transportation to their facilities to be via active transportation? (5% of the car trips in England, for example, are related to the National Health Service) Could their maps/directions perhaps be more walking/biking/transit focused rather than driving focused? What’s the out of the box solution for this?
• There’s a Blue Button for health data, a Green Button for Energy Data, a Red Button for Education Data – should their be a button for personal transit/bikeshare data? What if you could know that using active transportation differently (say, walking one more metro stop) could improve your health?
• On the list of databases that techies can access, one that caught my eye is the EPA Smart Location Database. Could that database be mashed up with a health system location database, such as, oh, I don’t know, Kaiser Permanente Interchange, to assist and support health systems in locating their facilities convenient to active transportation?
• What about green buildings? The comprehensive Green Building Information Gateway (GBIG.org) (see: Adding a New Layer to the Health Map: Your Built Environment :: GBIG Insight), includes transit information in LEED certification – how can that be connected to other databases for communities interested in healthy, healing environments?

Okay, that’s maybe more than a few, just pick the ones that you like, come up with some new ones, and see you on March 6 at 6:00 pm.

Make sure you sign up at the Techhies DC Meetup Site. And don’t forget the hashtag (#TechiesDCHealth).

View TechiesDCHealth at Center for Total Health 37304 on Flickr.com

This meetup is sponsored by Kaiser Permanente (@KPShare), the nation’s largest non-profit health system, with the support of Kaiser Permanente Digital Technology and Operations (@KPDigitalHealth), Kaiser Permanente Green Healthcare (@KPGreenHC), and of course Every Body Walk (@everybodywalk).