25 March 2014

Would you do health impact assessments if you didn't have to?

Carrot and Stick by Bruce Thomson
There's an interesting article by Elsa João and Anna McLauchlan in the latest issue of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal. They asked 187 Scottish Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment (SEA) practitioners "if SEA was not compulsory, would you do it?"

This made me wonder about this question in relation to HIA. In many, if not most settings, there is not a requirement that makes HIA's use compulsory. For most HIA practitioners this question is not a hypothetical one. We encounter it in relation to every HIA.

Some recent  research I was involved in found that only 7% of HIAs conducted in Australia and New Zealand between 2005 and 2009 were done to meet a legal or regulatory requirement.

The overwhelming majority of Scottish survey respondents said they would do SEA even if it was not compulsory. In HIA practice we rarely have to wonder, which is a luxury in some ways. Most HIAs are done freely and to learn something. The link between voluntary involvement and the ability to learn something from HIAs is not theoretical. As my colleagues and I found in this study, the extent to which participants had a degree of choice or control over their involvement in an HIA had an impact on their receptiveness to learning from the HIA process and acting on its recommendations.

Interestingly, even though the survey was looking at SEA in Scotland where its use is mandated, the themes identified through the survey resonate with those we encounter in promoting HIA's use:

  • the perception that a similar process are already being done;
  • a lack of resources;
  • the need for a ‘leaner process’; and
  • the difficulties that can arise when external conditions or many decisions have already been determined.
The article is well worth reading, here's the abstract:
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is undertaken in more than 60 countries worldwide. Support to the SEA process can range from formal legal requirements to voluntary ‘ad hoc’ approaches. In the cases where SEA is legally required, such as in Europe where the SEA Directive sets a framework for SEA legislation in 28 countries, practitioners may engage with SEA but in a reluctant way. This paper reports on a unique survey of 203 key people responsible for implementing the SEA legislative requirement in Scotland. The majority (53%) of the 187 practitioners who answered the hypothetical question ‘If SEA was not compulsory, would you do it?’ said ‘Yes’. However, results suggest that the responses were much nuanced. Practitioners were asked to explicate their reasoning and, irrespective of whether the answer was ‘yes’ or ‘no’, common themes were evident in accompanying remarks. This paper enables reflection on reasons for acceptance or rejection of the SEA process by discussing: the perception that a similar process to SEA is already being done, the problem with lack of resources, the call for a ‘leaner process’ and the difficulties of undertaking SEA when conditions are already determined at a higher ‘tier’.

24 March 2014

From Katie Hirono on behalf of the US Society of Practitioners of Health Impact Assessment:
The Society of Practitioners of Health Impact Assessment (SOPHIA) seeks recommendations for exemplary HIA reports for the 2014 list of outstanding HIA reports. The SOPHIA Model HIA Reports Library functions as a periodically updated repository of exemplary HIA reports. The library is intended for:
  1. People who are unfamiliar with HIA and want to understand what a high caliber HIA report product might look like (for example, people thinking of commissioning an HIA)
  1. HIA practitioners seeking above average HIA reports as a reference
You may recommend HIAs done by yourself or other practitioners. The HIA can be on a project or policy, done in any location both in the U.S. and abroad, and be either stand-alone or done as part of an integrated assessment.  As we have already selected reports from 2009 – 2012, ideally these reports would have been released within the past 2 years. 
You must be a member of SOPHIA to submit a recommended HIA report (but can join easily here: http://hiasociety.org/?page_id=48). Or, click here to submit a recommendation: http://hiasociety.org/?page_id=29

20 March 2014

The effectiveness of HIAs conducted in Australia and New Zealand



It occurred to me that I haven't posted a link to the final report on the Australian Research Council-funded study on the effectiveness of HIAs conducted in Australia and New Zealand between 2005 and 2009. The report has lots of information in it. Download it here.


San Francisco Department of Public Health's annual Health Impact Assessment Practitioners' Training

We are excited to announce that registration is now open for the San Francisco Department of Public Health's annual Health Impact Assessment Practitioners' Training (July 14-17, 2014). Register early at the link http://bit.ly/1mhK7lh

What is Health Impact Assessment?
Health impact assessment (HIA) is most often defined as “a combination of procedures, methods and tools by which a policy, program or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population” (World Health Organization, 1999).  

The field of HIA and the process of getting health into decision-making continues to evolve and grow http://www.healthimpactproject.org/hia/us

How will you and your team enhance skill sets, leverage big data, meaningfully engage communities, and have collective impact? HIA is one of many tools that may be considered for health-protective policy and action.

About the SFDPH HIA Training

What:  
7th Annual Health Impact Assessment Practitioners Summer Training Course

Where:
TCE Oakland Conference Center, 1111 Broadway, 7th Floor, Oakland, CA

When:
July 14-17, 2014 (attendance all four days is mandatory)

Instructors:
HIA practitioners at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and community, academic, and local government partners

Cost:
$960 (includes the cost of course materials, breakfast and lunch; accommodations and travel not included).  We are working to raise funds to support attendance of organizations facing financial hardship. We STRONGLY encourage applications from community-based organizations who are actively planning, considering, or doing HIA to apply.