The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama earlier this year was a down payment on expanding health coverage and lowering costs. But the work does not stop there. A truly comprehensive approach to health must account for transportation’s role in how we move and our levels of physical activity. The American Public Health Association tackles just that in a new report titled “the Hidden Health Costs of Transportation.”

Our transportation investments and the built environment — what we build and where — have an enormous impact on our health and the cost of our health care. With the debate over health care reform dominating the news daily, Transportation for America and coalition members from across the country took that powerful — yet often ignored or neglected — message to Capitol Hill leaders with a “health fly-in” last Friday.