Creating a standardised health impact valuation tool to support the design of healthy places

Although evidence linking urban design and environmental conditions to health outcomes exists, policymakers lack practical and proportionate methods to value these impacts in economic appraisal. Available tools are fragmented, technically demanding or unsuitable for systematic use across projects. Tools that enable high‑level comparison of scenarios when data are limited are also needed. We generate a standardised set of unit health costs that support consistent, transparent and scalable quantitative assessment of place‑based policies. We develop a value transfer-based method - co-designed with practitioners - for operationalising environment–health impact pathways within the HAUS economic valuation model into appraisal‑ready unit health costs covering 30 characteristics of the environment, including air quality, flood risk, walkability, noise, housing conditions and access to green space. Environmental exposure data and threshold-based typologies are combined with a representative UK population profile to estimate attributable changes in health per 1,000 residents over a 30‑year horizon. Costs are estimated from a societal perspective, disaggregated to agencies that bear the burden of ill health. Methods follow economic appraisal guidance to ensure compatibility with existing cost–benefit analysis frameworks. Estimated unit values enable rapid, high‑level assessment of development scenarios under limited‑ information, incorporating physical and mental health, activity and mortality in adults and children. Applied to a large urban regeneration case study, results show that health benefits can exceed physical infrastructure investment costs. Sensitivity analysis highlights the role of assumptions on exposure patterns, acute environmental risks and time horizons. By offering standardised unit health costs grounded in a government‑endorsed model, we support more consistent and credible appraisal of how changes in place affect population health across generations.

Key messages

• Allows for standardisation in economic appraisal of health impacts of urban development.

• Allows for quantification of how health costs of urban design are borne by different agencies in society.