Health Impact Assessment: A Practical Guide
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Purpose
This guide provides a practical approach to undertaking health impact assessment
(HIA). Based on the findings of the New South Wales HIA Project, the aim is to
encourage greater consideration of health
and wellbeing through the use of HIA
within project, program and policy
development.
Audience
The guide is written as an introduction to HIA. It will be useful for:
- people working in both health and non-health sectors;
- communities and their representatives; and
- people developing healthy public policy.
This guide will enable you to come away with a practical
understanding of HIA, its steps and underpinning
concepts and theories. It is a resource to enable people to
embark on doing HIAs, but also may be of use to those
commissioning an HIA.
Approach
Those undertaking an HIA are likely to pick and choose from a range of
strategies and approaches.
HIA is a tool that is flexible and responsive to both the proposal it is assessing, and the
people involved in the assessment. This guide provides
detail that may or may not be required depending on the
HIA being planned. The aim is to provide a range of ‘best
practice’ information to enable you to pick and choose
from among concepts and strategies that best suit the
HIA at hand.
Structure
Health Impact Assessment: A Practical Guide focuses on established steps or
stages of HIA: screening, scoping,
identification, assessment, decision-making
and recommendations, and evaluation and follow-up.
Guidance for undertaking each step is broken down into four key components:
- Purpose of the step
- Who is involved in the step
- Processes involved within the step
- Expected endpoints of the step
Essential considerations are presented throughout the guide, supported by practical advice based on the findings of the NSW HIA Project. These include:
- practitioner reflections based on the experiences of those who have completed HIAs in NSW as part of the NSW HIA Project;
- introductions to the theories and concepts behind the steps of HIA; and
- case studies referring to actual HIAs.
