Prior to the creation of Safe and Healthy Communities in 2015, EnviroHealth Consulting was founded in Colorado in 2003 and is a woman-owned business. It is one of the first private firms to help public health, planning, and transportation agencies integrate health into local land use and transportation planning. EnviroHealth Consulting was created to focus on improving decision making and health outcomes through community health and the natural and built environment. Since then, we have worked in more than three states and the District of Columbia, eight leading national organizations, universities, and foundations from planning and health, and with hundreds of community design and public health professionals and community residents. We’ve helped them increase awareness and support, develop strategic and collaborative planning and policy approaches, project management, facilitation, data collection and analysis, and build organizational capacity to advance healthy built environments.

Karen Roof, Ph.D., Founder and Director

She has worked for over thirteen years at the nexus of health and the built environment. Karen works with national, state, and local public agencies as well as private organizations to improve the health of communities by making positive changes to the built environment. More specifically, Ms. Roof, in collaboration with planning and health subcontractors, staff and colleagues, has:

• Completed five Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) related to housing, light rail stations, neighborhood plans and location of a regional recreational facility. An additional six HIAs completed or revised related to final project for graduate course.
• Conducted school and community wide walkability audits and food audits.
• Facilitated numerous trainings related to land use planning and the health connections.
• Conducted nationwide and international presentations and trainings specific to HIA.
• Consulted on a number of community and city-wide health initiatives to conduct broad strategic planning and program management, facilitate cross-sector collaboration, develop policies and programs and ensure implementation.
• Served as community engagement specialist for more than 6 years at environmental sites in multiple states.
• Managed numerous environmental public health programs for six years for the Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others.
• Developed and conducted nationwide and local surveys, community needs assessments, mapping exercises, focus groups and interviews for numerous projects to study and address community needs.
• Evaluated the effectiveness of HIA in relation to the built environment in PhD dissertation research at the University of Colorado Denver (UCD)
• Designed and led a graduate-level course at the UCD called, Planning for Healthy Communities: A Public Health and Urban Planning Approach.  
  

Graduate Instructor
University of Colorado, Denver, January 2008 – Present (each Spring), Graduate Instructor. Teach course called, Planning for Healthy Communities: A Public Health and Urban Planning Approach. Graduate students are taught about the emerging interdisciplinary professional practice of creating healthy, active living environments - making the sustainable connections between health, planning, food and transportation and HIA.

Publications

1. Policy Impact of HIA Book (wrote Chapter 17:  HIA in Colorado:  A Tool Used to Inform Policy Actors), Oxford Publishing, June 2013. Journal of Environmental Health (July/August 2008) which include:
2. Smart Growth and Health for the Future: “Our Course of Action” Delaware County, Ohio;
3. Tool Created to Assess Health Impacts of Development Decisions in Ingham County, MI;
4. Public Health: Seattle & King County’s Push for the Built Environment; and
5. Tri - County Health Department in Colorado Does More Than Just Review a Development Plan.
6. Contributed to two articles in the American Planning Association’s Public Advisory Service report, “Integrating Planning and Public Health: Tools and Strategies to Create Healthy Places” (PAS 539/540, 2006). 

Presentations and Workshops
International Conference on HIA, Evaluation of an HIA of a Low-Income Housing Redevelopment, Quebec, Canada, August, 2012; National Health Impact Assessment Conference, Evaluation of an Health Impact Assessment of a Low Income Housing Redevelopment, Washington DC, April 3, 2012; Boston Planning for Healthy Communities Workshop, Sept. 2011; Improving Health in a Housing Redevelopment: Health Impact Assessment as a Tool, Healthy Housing National Conference, Denver, 2011; Balancing equity, Assessing health impacts, Ensuring effectiveness, American Public Health Association Annual Conference, Denver, CO, November, 2010; Improving Health Through the Built Environment: Health Impact Assessment, National Environmental Health Association, Albuquerque, NM, June 2010; Safe Routes to School in Wheat Ridge community meetings, 2009; Planning Cool and Healthy Communities, Colorado American Planning Association/American Society of Landscape Architects joint conference, Breckenridge, CO, September 2008; Innovative Land Use Planning and Design for Health and Climate Change, National Environmental Health Association Annual Conference, Atlantic City, N.J., June 2007.

Karen completed her PhD at the University of Colorado Denver in Design and Planning. She has a Masters in Science in Environmental Policy and Management from the University of Denver, and a Bachelors of Science at Radford University in Political Science and Economics.

Subcontractors
As needed for specific projects, EnviroHealth Consulting collaborates with partners and hires consultants with different areas of expertise and technical knowledge. Envirohealth consulting has hired up to four subcontractors at a time to complete projects.