Healthy and Safe Housing: A Foundation for Healthy Futures

The link between housing and health is well known and well established. Efforts to improve public health through housing improvements go back to the origins of the public health movement (Lopez 2009). When the Acting Surgeon General, Steven K. Galson, issued a “Call to Action to Promote Healthy Housing” in June 2009, he recalled this historic linkage with a quote from Florence Nightingale who said, “The connection between the health and dwelling of the population is the most important one that exists.” But he also went an important step forward by calling for a “comprehensive, coordinated approach to improving health and safety in homes.”