Heidi Stucker, AICP

Department: Public Health
Email: hstucker@mapc.org
Phone: 617-933-0739

Biography:

Heidi Stucker has been with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) since 2014 and has served as the Assistant Director of the Public Health Department since 2018. Heidi helps guide the Public Health Department’s work to promote healthy communities in the MAPC region. She provides strategic planning, fundraising, and partnership development support; and manages and contributes to public health planning projects with municipal partners. In her work, she is guided by a commitment to improving conditions in neighborhoods and for people who disproportionately experience poor health.

Heidi leads MAPC’s food system planning and policy program, which seeks to advance equity, health and food security across the food system. Her work includes the Massachusetts Local Food Action Plan and, more recently, the Everett Community Food System Assessment & Plan. Food policy priorities include Healthy Incentives Program, SNAP enrollment, school breakfast, and sugary beverages legislation. Learn more about that work Learn more about the food system planning and policy program here: https://www.mapc.org/our-work/expertise/public-health/healthy-food-access.

Heidi and her colleagues are pioneering MAPC’s use of Health Lens Analyses to assess health impacts of planning and policy decision-making in the region, and Community Health Needs Assessments and Health Improvement Plans to comprehensively evaluate and plan for community health needs. She brings a public health perspective to MAPC’s multi-disciplinary fields of planning practice, from climate resilience to age friendly communities to open space access to stormwater management.

Heidi earned a M.A. from Tufts University’s Urban Environmental, Policy and Planning program. Her master’s thesis researched the emergent trend of kitchen incubators in New England (read Heidi’s thesis). She holds a B.A. in Intercultural Studies from Warren Wilson College.

Areas of expertise: food system planning, public health planning, climate resilience, livable and age friendly communities, food system modelling, site suitability analysis, facilitation and engagement.