About

Dr. Jill Litt is a Professor of Environmental Health in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an Associated Researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal). She received her PhD in environmental health and public policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on urban environmental health and neighborhood design, with over two decades of experience working in neighborhoods across Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Denver, Barcelona, Montpellier, and Marseille. Her work addresses issues such as urban brownfields cleanup and redevelopment, lead poisoning, residential demolition, environmental justice, chemical risk assessment, housing, community gardens, neighborhood greening, local food systems, and nature-based social prescribing. As an interdisciplinary researcher, Dr. Litt employs community-based participatory research, epidemiology, risk assessment, and ethnography to study the relationships between residential environments and health. Her research explores neighborhoods and health, the health and psychosocial benefits of community gardens and urban farms, and the impact of nature-based social prescribing on mental and physical well-being. She has been awarded a European Commission fellowship to study the relationships between nearby nature and health, and she is the principal investigator of a four-year community-level randomized controlled trial of community gardening called Community Activation for Prevention (CAPS). Her recent work includes designing and testing nature-based social prescribing interventions to address loneliness and social isolation among young people, and conducting a five-year international study of such interventions across six urban areas.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Medicine
• Economic growth
• Architectural engineering
• Engineering
• Public relations
• Economics
• Environmental health
• Sociology
• Psychotherapist
• Business
• Social psychology
• Environmental resource management
• Environmental science
• Clinical psychology

Selected publications

• Nature-based biopsychosocial resilience: An integrative theoretical framework for research on nature and health

  Environment International · 2023 · 129 citations

  • Psychology
  • Environmental resource management
  • Social psychology

  Nature-based solutions including urban forests and wetlands can help communities cope better with climate change and other environmental stressors by enhancing social-ecological resilience. Natural ecosystems, settings, elements and affordances can also help individuals become more personally resilient to a variety of stressors, although the mechanisms underpinning individual-level nature-based resilience, and their relations to social-ecological resilience, are not well articulated. We propose 'nature-based biopsychosocial resilience theory' (NBRT) to address these gaps. Our framework begins by suggesting that individual-level resilience can refer to both: a) a person's set of adaptive resources; and b) the processes by which these resources are deployed. Drawing on existing nature-health perspectives, we argue that nature contact can support individuals build and maintain biological, psychological, and social (i.e. biopsychosocial) resilience-related resources. Together with nature-based social-ecological resilience, these biopsychosocial resilience resources can: i) reduce the risk of various stressors (preventive resilience); ii) enhance adaptive reactions to stressful circumstances (response resilience), and/or iii) facilitate more rapid and/or complete recovery from stress (recovery resilience). Reference to these three resilience processes supports integration across more familiar pathways involving harm reduction, capacity building, and restoration. Evidence in support of the theory, potential interventions to promote nature-based biopsychosocial resilience, and issues that require further consideration are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of COVID-19 on Public Space: A Review of the Emerging Questions

  2020 · 233 citations

  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Public relations

  Restrictions on the use of public space and social distancing have been key policy measures to reduce the transmission of SAR-CoV-2 and protect public health. At the time of writing, one half of the world’s population has been asked to stay home and avoid many public places. What will be the long term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on public space once the restrictions have been lifted? The depth and extent of transformation is unclear, especially as it relates to the future design, use and perceptions of public space. This article aims to highlight emerging questions at the interface of COVID-19 and city design. It is possible that the COVID-19 crisis may fundamentally change our relationship with public space. In the ensuing months and years, it will be critical to study and measure these changes in order to inform urban planning and design in a post-COVID-19 world.

  DOI

• The impact of COVID-19 on public space: an early review of the emerging questions – design, perceptions and inequities

  Cities & Health · 2020 · 619 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science

  Restrictions on the use of public space and physical distancing have been key policy measures to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 and protect public health. At the time of writing, one half of the world's population has been asked to stay home and avoid many public places. What will be the long term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on public space once the restrictions have been lifted? The depth and extent of transformation is unclear, especially as it relates to the future design, use and perceptions of public space. This article aims to highlight emerging questions at the interface of COVID-19 and city design. It is possible that the COVID-19 crisis may fundamentally change our relationship with public space. In the ensuing months and years, it will be critical to study and measure these changes in order to inform urban planning and design in a post-COVID world.

  DOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K01EH000066

  NIH · $877k · 2009

Frequent coauthors

• Ashby Lavelle Sachs

  Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública

  134 shared

• Amy A. Eyler

  Washington University in St. Louis

  130 shared

• Rodney Lyn

  SickKids Foundation

  123 shared

• Hannah Reed

  University of Worcester

  107 shared

• Laura Hidalgo

  Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública

  84 shared

• Carolyn Daher

  Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública

  84 shared

• Cheryl Carnoske

  Tydock Pharma (Italy)

  83 shared

• Jeanette Gustat

  Tulane University

  80 shared

Education

• PhD, Public Health

  Johns Hopkins University

  2001

Awards & honors

• European Commission fellowship (2018)
• Crown Institute Award

Similar researchers at University of Colorado Boulder

• Jose-Luis Jimenezh-233
• Joost de Gouwh-186
• Roy Parkerh-161
• Kristi S. Ansethh-159
• Thomas R. Cechh-156