Building local capacity for health impact assessment: lessons for local public health.
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Capacity Building
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Health Impact Assessment
Impact assessment
Stakeholder Engagement
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Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is applied to infrastructure and other large projects. The European Union EIA Directive (2011/92/EU as amended by 2014/52/EU) requires EIAs to consider the effects that a project might have on human health. The International Association for Impact Assessment and the European Public Health Association prepared a reference paper on public health in EIA to enable the health sector to contribute to this international requirement. We present lessons from this joint action. We review literature on policy analysis, impact assessment and Health Impact Assessment (HIA). We use findings from this review and from the consultation on the reference paper to consider how population and human health should be defined; how the health sector can participate in the EIA process; the relationship between EIA and HIA; what counts as evidence; when an effect should be considered ‘likely’ and ‘significant’; how changes in health should be reported; the risks from a business-as-usual coverage of human health in EIA; and finally competencies for conducting an assessment of human health. This article is relevant for health authorities seeking to ensure that infrastructure, and other aspects of development, are not deleterious to, but indeed improve, human health.
Health Impact Assessment
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Impact assessment
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This guide has grown out of the collective experience of health and development organizations working to build health sector capacity in developing countries. The focus of the Guide is the measurement of capacity for the purpose of monitoring and evaluating capacity- building interventions. It responds to a demand among public health planners evaluators and practitioners for advice on assessing the many aspects of health programming that fall under the rubric of capacity building. The purpose of this guide is to assist health planners and evaluators to: gain a clear understanding of the concepts of capacity and capacity building; critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of current approaches to capacity measurement design a capacity-building M&E plan that outlines a systematic approach to measuring capacity and assessing the results of capacity-building interventions in the health sector. (excerpt)
Capacity Building
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Capacity development
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A new online digital health service (DHS) was developed for the West Midlands, UK, and provides information on health, health care services and on professional development opportunities. This study is a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) of the DHS to assess potential impacts on health and health inequalities and make recommendations to decision makers to enhance positive health impacts, reduce negative impacts and consider mitigation. There was no evidence from the HIA to indicate that the DHS in its current form would have any potential impact on the health and wellbeing of people in the West Midlands and on health inequalities.
Health Impact Assessment
Digital Health
Health assessment
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This article first illustrates the EU and national regulatory frameworks related to policies and integrated actions for health and environmental protection, with particular reference to evaluation of the impact of the environment on health, then provides definitions of "evaluation of health impact" and of "environmental epidemiology" and provides synthetic proposals on procedures and operational levels (national, regional and local). Finally, the responsibilities of regional and local government bodies in supporting ARPA, Departments of Prevention of local health departments and physicians.
Health protection
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Health impact assessment (HIA) provides useful information on existing health services, their capabilities and the health status of the local communities, which is otherwise often unavailable. In Nigeria, HIA is usually applied to projects and, by exposing existing health inequities in project communities, provides the necessary tool for development proponents to act to provide or improve health services and to implement health promotion activities. Based on HIA experience in Nigeria, this paper highlights the deficiencies in national legislation with regards to HIA/EIA (environmental impact assessment) integration and a number of learning points are discussed. First, a complete health baseline is critical to the understanding of project impacts; analysis must be broad-based, considering existing health determinants. Second, community stakeholders and proponents may modify the implementation of health mitigation measures and should be seen as collaborators in the assessment process. Third, strong HIA recommendations can influence project design. A greater participation of the health sector in EIA is required to enhance HIA utilization.
Health Impact Assessment
Baseline (sea)
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Background.Prospective health impact assessment is a new approach to predicting potential health impacts of policies, programmes or projects. It has been widely recognized that public policies have important impacts on health. In 1997, the Liverpool Public Health Observatory was commissioned to carry out a health impact assessment of the Merseyside Integrated Transport Strategy (MerITS). A secondary aim was to pilot a method for health impact assessment at the strategic level.
Health Impact Assessment
Impact assessment
Population Health
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In their adoption of WHA resolution 69.19, World Health Organization Member States requested all bilateral and multilateral initiatives to conduct impact assessments of their funding to human resources for health. The High-Level Commission for Health Employment and Economic Growth similarly proposed that official development assistance for health, education, employment and gender are best aligned to creating decent jobs in the health and social workforce. No standard tools exist for assessing the impact of global health initiatives on the health workforce, but tools exist from other fields. The objectives of this paper are to describe how a review of grey literature informed the development of a draft health workforce impact assessment tool and to introduce the tool. A search of grey literature yielded 72 examples of impact assessment tools and guidance from a wide variety of fields including gender, health and human rights. These examples were reviewed, and information relevant to the development of a health workforce impact assessment was extracted from them using an inductive process. A number of good practice principles were identified from the review. These informed the development of a draft health workforce impact assessment tool, based on an established health labour market framework. The tool is designed to be applied before implementation. It consists of a relatively short and focused screening module to be applied to all relevant initiatives, followed by a more in-depth assessment to be applied only to initiatives for which the screening module indicates that significant implications for HRH are anticipated. It thus aims to strike a balance between maximising rigour and minimising administrative burden. The application of the new tool will help to ensure that health workforce implications are incorporated into global health decision-making processes from the outset and to enhance positive HRH impacts and avoid, minimise or offset negative impacts.
Workforce Development
Grey Literature
Health Services Research
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Health impact assessment is a structured decision support tool used to systematically characterize the anticipated health effects, both adverse and beneficial, of societal decisions. In San Francisco, the use of health impact assessments has not only produced evidence to inform health policy decision making but has also contributed to the political conditions needed to achieve optimal population health. Health impact assessments have helped increase public awareness of the determinants of health, routine monitoring of these determinants, cooperation among institutions, health-protective laws and regulations, and organizational networks for health advocacy and accountability. Drawing on more than a decade of local experience, we identify the direct and indirect effects of the assessments on the politics of governance as well as on health. We demonstrate that health impact assessment is both an analytic tool and a process that helps build the social institutions that can improve health.
Health Impact Assessment
Population Health
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