Health effects are often overlooked when planning development projects ranging from new runways at major airport sites to developing water supply systems to improve sanitation. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is the assessment of the health effects, positive or negative, of a project, programme, or policy. It is therefore concerned with the health of populations and attempts to predict the future consequences for health of decisions which have not yet been implemented. HIA is a new and growing field with numerous schools of thought and areas of controversy.
This book is the first to give a comprehensive overview of the concepts, theory, techniques and applications of HIA to aid all those preparing projects or carrying out assessments. It draws on examples and thinking from many different disciplines and many parts of the world. It identifies the areas of agreement and the questions remaining unanswered. It maps a confused field and signposts possible directions for future progress.
HIA is intended to help decision makers in all areas foresee the consequences of their decisions, to ensure the consequences are considered and reduce the risk of population health being damaged through some indirect and unintended consequence of a decision.
This book is a practical handbook for those preparing the assessments be they epidemiologists, environmentalists, health economists or public health specialists as well as serving as a conceptual guide for policy makers, decision makers and planners at national and international level. This book will serve both as a reference for the established HIA practitioner and as an introduction for the novice.
Preface ; 1. What is HIA? Introduction and overview ; 2. The development of HIA ; 3. Health inequalities and HIA ; 4. Causal mechanisms for HIA: learning from epidemiology ; 5. The contribution of the social sciences to HIA ; 6. Quantitative approaches to HIA ; 7. Evidence and HIA ; 8. The role of lay knowledge in HIA ; 9. Planning an HIA ; 10. HIA: a practitioners view ; 11. Rapid appraisal techniques ; 12. Lessons from EIA ; 13. Community development: the role of HIA ; 14. HIA at the international policy making level ; 15. HIA of policy in Canada ; 16. HIA and national policy in the Netherlands ; 17. HIA in Scotland ; 18. The experience of HIA in Wales ; 19. HIA at the local level in Sweden ; 20. HIA in Australia ; 21. HIA and policy development in London: using HIA as a tool to integrate health considerations into strategy ; 22. Using HIA in local government ; 23. HIA: the German perspective ; 24. HIA in Schiphol airport ; 25. The Finningley Airport HIA: A Case Study ; 26. HIA and urban regeneration: the Ferrier Estate, England ; 27. Impact assessment in Canada: an evolutionary process ; 28. HIA and waste disposal ; 29. HIA and fears of toxicity: health risk assessment of a control programme for the white-spotted tussock moth in New Zealand ; 30. The HIA of crime prevention ; 31. Expanding the number of places for medical student training in England: an assessment of the impacts ; 32. HIA in developing countries ; 33. HIA of agricultural and food policies ; 34. HIA and the National Alcohol Strategy for England ; 35. HIA in SEA and its application to policy in Europe ; 36. Future directions for HIA
