Davidson Design for Life (DD4L) is an initiative of the Town of Davidson to foster healthy community design through the use of health impact assessments (HIA), public participation, and collaborative efforts in Davidson, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region, and North Carolina.

Mission: “To help Davidson be a community that is healthy today and even healthier tomorrow while serving as a model for other small towns by implementing healthy design.”

Goals: 

1. Develop a better understanding of the HIA process as it applies to small, rural towns and use HIA to evaluate and inform built environment decisions by the Town of Davidson as well as regional and statewide decision-makers.
2. More fully and broadly engage our citizens in the decision making process to make healthier lifestyle options available.
3. Collaborate with local, regional, and national partners to promote the use and understanding of HIA and healthy community design principals.
4. Document and share the steps we take and the partnerships we form in order to serve as a model for communities to follow nation-wide.

History: In 2010, the Davidson Board of Commissioners set a goal to “Enhance the physical, mental, and emotional well being of our residents” including an action step to pursue funding to conduct health impact assessments (HIA). Shortly after, town staff created the Davidson Design for Life (DD4L) committee to seek funding, training, and resources to support this goal. In early 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy Community Design Initiative posted a call for grant applications to conduct HIAs and the committee applied for the grant. In September of 2011, Davidson was one of six selected to receive the grant award (other grant recipients included the public health departments in Oregon, Massachusetts, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Douglas County, Nebraska). The grant provides funding to support the DD4L program for the next three years and Katherine Hebert, the DD4L Coordinator, was hired in December 2011 (for more information see Awards and Grants).