From a community-informed, community-based descriptive approach to the launch of a randomised controlled trial

Community greening efforts are lauded for their potential to beautify neighborhoods, increase opportunities for nature contact, improve outlook and health, purify the air, and cool the local climate, among many other benefits.

Community gardens, as one example of community greening, offer the promise of increasing access to fruits and vegetables, strengthening social connections, reducing sedentary behavior and improving well being in addition to beautifying neighborhoods.

In this talk, Dr Jill Litt, from IS Global in Barcelona and University of Colorado Boulder, will review the research findings from her 10-year community-academic partnership with Denver Urban Gardens and describe the Community Activation for Prevention Study (CAPS), a 4-year randomised controlled trial of community gardens in Denver funded by the American Cancer Society.

About Dr Jill Litt

Dr Litt is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an Associated Researcher at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal). She has experience in the area of urban environmental health working over the past decade in the neighborhoods of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and Denver and more recently, Barcelona, Spain and Marseille and Montpellier, France on a variety of issues related to the built and natural environments and health including urban brownfields cleanup and redevelopment, lead poisoning, residential demolition, environmental justice, chemical risk assessment, housing, green spaces, community gardens, and local food systems.