Citation

Walls KL, Boulic M, Boddy JW. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2016; 13(10): e13100956.

Affiliation

Urban Planning and Environmental Services, MWH Stantec, Level 3, 111 Carlton Gore Road, Auckland 0745, New Zealand. Doug.Boddy@mwhglobal.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph13100956

PMID

27690064

Abstract

The United Nations "25 × 25 Strategy" of decreasing non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases, by 25% by 2025 does not appear to take into account all causes of NCDs. Its focus is on a few diseases, which are often linked with life-style factors with "voluntary" "modifiable behavioral risk factors" causes tending towards an over-simplification of the issues. We propose to add some aspects of our built environment related to hazardous building materials, and detailed form of the construction of infrastructure and buildings, which we think are some of the missing causes of NCDs. Some of these could be termed "involuntary causes", as they relate to factors that are beyond the control of the general public.

Language: en