Housing Is Health: Rethinking Where Well-Being Begins with Amal Barre
Special thanks to UnityPoint Health, the presenting sponsor of the 2026 My City My Health Conference, for supporting this work and helping us move the city forward.
Urban planner, housing researcher, and filmmaker Amal Barre joins Corey Dion Lewis for a conversation about why housing should be treated as a core part of health.
Urban planner, housing researcher, and filmmaker Amal Barre joins Corey Dion Lewis for a conversation about why housing should be treated as a core part of health.
Amal brings more than a decade of experience in affordable housing, homelessness services, urban planning, and community development to the conversation. She explains why stable, accessible, quality housing cannot be separated from healthcare, economic mobility, education, transportation, neighborhood design, and the other systems that shape our daily lives.
Corey and Amal discuss what happens when healthcare and housing operate in silos, why professionals need to build relationships outside their traditional spaces, and how showing up in “unexpected places” can create new opportunities for collaboration and change.
They also explore Amal’s path into housing work, what she learned working alongside families navigating homelessness and social service systems, and why planners, healthcare professionals, nonprofits, developers, and community members need to better understand what each other is doing.
Amal will join the Housing Is Medicine panel at the 2026 My City My Health Conference in Des Moines on November 13.
In this episode:
- Why housing and health are inseparable
- How the built environment shapes health outcomes
- The cost of navigating fragmented systems
- Why relationships matter in solving housing challenges
- What healthcare organizations can do beyond making referrals
- How planning, housing, healthcare, and community organizations can work together
- Why breaking down silos can lead to better community solutions
Learn more about My City My Health and register for the 2026 conference at mycity.health.
