OBJECTIVES The National Environmental Policy Act and related state laws require many public agencies to analyze and disclose potentially significant environmental effects of agency actions, including effects on human health. In this paper we review the purpose and procedures of environmental impact assessment (EIA), existing regulatory requirements for health effects analysis, and potential bar...

BACKGROUND Policy decisions made within all sectors have the potential to influence population health and equity. Recognition of this provides impetus for the health sector to engage with other sectors to facilitate the development of policies that recognise, and aim to improve, population outcomes. This paper compares the approaches implemented to facilitate such engagement in two Australian j...

BACKGROUND Health Impact Assessment (HIA) involves assessing how proposals may alter the determinants of health prior to implementation and recommends changes to enhance positive and mitigate negative impacts. HIAs growing use needs to be supported by a strong evidence base, both to validate the value of its application and to make its application more robust. We have carried out the first syst...

OBJECTIVE To increase the positive and mitigate the negative health impacts of the mayor's draft transport strategy for London. DESIGN A rapid prospective health impact assessment (HIA) of the penultimate draft of the strategy, using a review commissioned by the regional director of public health; an appraisal of congestion charging; and a participatory workshop. Two audits of changes were pe...

OBJECTIVES To document the growing use in the United States of health impact assessment (HIA) methods to help planners and others consider the health consequences of their decisions. METHODS Using multiple search strategies, 27 HIAs were identified that were completed in the U.S. during 1999-2007. Key characteristics of each HIA were abstracted from published and unpublished sources. RESULT...

Health impact assessments (HIA) promote the consideration of health in a wide range of public decisions. Although each HIA is different, common pathways, evidence bases, and strategies for community engagement tend to emerge in certain sectors, such as urban redevelopment, natural resource extraction, or transportation planning. To date, a limited number of HIAs have been conducted on decisions...

INTRODUCTION Learning is essential for sustainable employability. However, various factors make work-related learning more difficult for certain groups of workers, who are consequently at a disadvantage in the labour market. In the long term, that in turn can have adverse health implications and can make those groups vulnerable. With a view to encouraging workers to continue learning, the Nethe...

BACKGROUND Health impact assessment (HIA) has emerged to identify those activities and policies likely to have major impacts on the health of a population. METHOD In this research, qualitative method was applied to identifying health determinants that urban man made lake affect on them, formatting and weighing the hierarchy of the factors, calculating AHP, and Technique for Order Preference b...

OBJECTIVE To introduce a conceptual structure that can be used to organise the evidence base for Health Impact Assessment (HIA). BACKGROUND HIA can be used to judge the potential health effects of a policy, programme or project on a population, and the distribution of those effects. Progress has been made in incorporating HIA into routine practice, especially (in the UK) at local level. Howev...

As globalisation has opened remote parts of the world to foreign investment, global leaders at the United Nations and beyond have called on multinational companies to foresee and mitigate negative impacts on the communities surrounding their overseas operations. This movement towards corporate impact assessment began with a push for environmental and social inquiries. It has been followed by de...