Health Impact Assessment Blog

16 May 2013

Oregon Health Authority HIA Program Position (Closes soon!)

From the position announcement:

OHA's HIA Program envisions an Oregon where human health and the distribution of health impacts are actively considered in relevant projects, policies, and plans across sectors. The Program is focused on catalyzing change in three key areas: promoting health impact assessment (HIA) among decision-makers and community partners; institutionalizing HIA practice into existing mechanisms; and expanding support for practitioners. We are seeking an epidemiologist/public health scientist to join our team to provide technical leadership on HIA projects and advance the consideration of health in Oregon.

The position closes on May 20. Click below to view the announcement:

http://agency.governmentjobs.com/oregon/default.cfm?action=viewjob&JobID=647683

U.S.A. Southeast Regional HIA Summit

From the organisers:

Registration is now open for the first ever Southeast Regional HIA Summit! July 31 – August 2, Davidson, NC.

This is NOT your typical conference. Let’s face facts…HIA practitioners are a special breed of people who are creative enough to bridge the gap between multiple fields and operate outside of the box on a daily basis. Whenever we get together the atmosphere is more like a family reunion than a meeting. Add in the small-town charm of Davidson, NC and southern hospitality and you just know you are in store for a good time.

Here’s what the first Southeast Regional HIA Summit has to offer:

Opportunities to LISTEN: Hear from Dr. John Santopietro, M.D., Carolinas HealthCare System, on The State of Mental Health in the U.S. and Mitchell Silver, AICP, Past President of the American Planning Association on Building Healthy Communities.

Chances to LEARN: From each other during small group discussions− HIA Speed Dating, HIA Tool Exchange, Troubleshooting your HIA, Developing the HIA Message, Sustaining an HIA Program, and HIA and Health Equity.

Time to HAVE FUN: Networking during community activities including bicycling on Davidson’s greenway, paddling on Lake Davidson and viewing the Davidson Design for Life Documentary at Our Town Cinema.

And much, much more!

Likely participants include: HIA practitioners, researchers, and funders; professionals and educators from the fields of planning, policy, and public health; and interested government officials and not-for-profit leaders. To get the most out of the Summit, you should have direct experience in conducting HIA; be currently involved in conducting your first HIA; or at least have a basic understanding of the process and principles of HIA.

Everything you need to know about the Summit may be found on our web page:

Preliminary schedule-of-events

Hotel information

Online registration or a printable registration form (Early Bird Registration Deadline is June 15)

Travel scholarship

How to get to Davidson, NC

For more information and questions, please contact Courtney Spear, Summit Conference Planner at 704.400.0880 or courtneyhspear@gmail.com

3 May 2013

Impact Assessment: The Next Generation, the program of #iaia13 is available

Focus on Health - 14 May

The diversity of HIA practice worldwide is both a challenge and an asset, and the IAIA 2013 Health Day presents an ideal opportunity to facilitate dialogue across HIA practice globally. The Health Day and the other health-related activities will explore the importance of health within the Impact Assessment process, will enable IA practitioners to reflect on key lessons learned through the application of HIA, and will conclude with an examination of how HIA needs to evolve to be a better fit for the challenges ahead.

The one below is just a short summary, check the whole event program and the details of the presentations on the final program. At page 20 you find the details of the Health Day

6.1 Integrating health in impact assessments: Opportunities not to be missed

6.2 The science and art of international: HIA practice: Reflecting the range of HIA practitioners

6.3 The science and art of international: HIA practice: Old issues and new applications

6.4 The science and art of international: HIA practice: Let’s discuss

6.5 The science and art of international: HIA practice: Example from the industry

6.6 Using health impact assessment to achieve sustainable goals

14.6 Community responses to the next generation of energy technologies

See you in Calgary!

HIA Gateway Updates

The HIA Bibliography has recently been updated, April 2013, and 50 new references were added. It is updated quarterly. If you have any relevant published papers you think should be on this list please forward to HIA Gateway We are now part of Public Health England. Public Health England will use use your information (as registered on the HIA Gateway) in the same way as we previously used your information and will not use it for any other purposes. We will ensure these details remain secure. If you no longer wish to continue receiving this monthly email and remain registered with the HIA Gateway, please contact the HIA Gateway: bwh-tr.hia@nhs.net .

9 April 2013

Conference: From local to global – Health Impact Assessment to face new challenges

From the organisers:

The 13th International Conference on Health Impact Assessment (HIA) will take place on 2-4 October 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Please download the guiding document for the conference, which gives a first taste of the various tracks which are planned. The call for papers will be sent out in a few days. At the same time, the information about the abstract submission will become available on the conference website.
Key dates to remember:

Abstract submission deadline: 31 May 2013

Date of the conference: 2-4 October 2013

5 April 2013

Mental Health Impact Assessment Report

From Lynn Todman at the Adler Institute on Social Exclusion:

Our report “U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Policy Guidance: A Mental Health Impact Assessment” has been completed and is available to you at adler.edu/MHIA

This report is the culmination of our 18-month study examining how changes in federal law regarding the use of arrest records in employment decisions would affect Chicago’s underserved Englewood neighborhood. The report also details the Mental Health Impact Assessment (MHIA) process that we employed at the Institute on Social Exclusion at the Adler School of Professional Psychology, constituting an important advance and contribution to the practice of Health Impact Assessment (HIA).

As you know, it is common for U.S. policy makers to consider factors like the natural environment, human physical health, and economic impact in their decision-making processes. Environmental Impact Assessments, Health Impact Assessments, and Economic Impact Assessment are increasingly common. However, assessments that evaluate psychological or mental health impacts are rare, despite the fact that mental health is an essential element of healthy communities.

The MHIA process is intended help policy makers assess how changes in public policy may help or harm the mental health of communities, especially the most vulnerable. It is also a useful tool in helping to narrow health inequities, and will become increasingly important in light of dwindling mental health resources and support. Conducting an MHIA can help ensure that policies that are implemented will help reduce health inequities, and improve the health and wellbeing of communities and the nation.

Thank you for your interest in our work. If we can answer questions or provide more information for you, please contact us at ISE@adler.edu

4 April 2013

Support HIA Research in East Africa

CIHR Project Page

Kevin Pottie from the University of Ottawa and his colleagues in Canada have submitted a CIHR grant application to support the use of HIA by social entrepreneurs in East Africa. You can support their application by visiting the project page and clicking the like button, which is one of the factors CIHR considers.

3 April 2013

The Rise of HIAs in the United States

The Health Impact Project has put out a nice infographic about the use of HIA across the U.S.:

Source

2 April 2013

The untapped potential of health impact assessment

A fascinating paper by Mirko Winkler and colleagues has been published in the WHO Bulletin:

Countries and regions that are promoting HIA's use or have produced HIA guidance. Source

A paper on the “untapped potential of health impact assessment” has been published in the current issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. In this policy and practice piece, current health impact assessment (HIA) practice is summarized, the potential of HIA to become a critical player with the major drivers of global change (e.g. population growth and urbanization, growing pressure on natural resources and global climate change) is outlined, and it is discussed where and how HIA can become fully integrated into the impact assessment suite. HIA has an important role to play in of the unfolding 21st century’s sustainable development agenda, and if the Rio+20 agenda is to genuinely benefit vulnerable populations, then “health” must be an equal participant and partner at the table.

Link to article

28 March 2013

HIA Gateway moving and changing but still staying the same

Fro Dr Sue Wright, HIA Gateway Manager:

The HIA Gateway is moving. It is part The Network of Public Health Observatories group (this was previously known as the Association of Public Health Observatories) but from 1^st April the website (including myself) is moving into an executive agency of the Department of Health, called Public Health England (PHE). The HIA Gateway will become part of the PHE portal (website) and this in turn will be accessed from the English Government Domain website: www.gov.uk . This means that the HIA Gateway is now secure for the foreseeable future.

The term "HIA Gateway" will remain but may become "PHE HIA Gateway" or Public Health England HIA Gateway and existing URLs for the HIA Gateway will still be operational and you will be redirected to the HIA Gateway landing page on the PHE portal.

I am unclear at this stage if the monthly emails will still be sent out nor if and how people will be able to register with the HIA Gateway alone. Registration with the HIA Gateway has ensured you receive a monthly email listing recent resources added to the website.

I will also be contacting those people on the People’s Directory and Contractor’s Directory in the near future to check if they wish to remain on the HIA Gateway now it has moved into PHE.

Thank you for your continuing support and if you have any HIAs or other resources you think relevant to the practice of HIA, MWIA or any other health related Impact Assessment, do please forward these on to me (or if you prefer links to these).

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Take home key points:

The HIA Gateway will become a formalised part of the new national public health agency of England.
www.hiagateway.org.uk will still direct you to the HIA Gateway site as it currently does.
Those using the existing actual URL should check to ensure that they have updated the URL to the new one generated when the site becomes a micro-site of the larger Public Health England website or use www.hiagateway.org.uk.
Please continue to email Sue with your HIAs and other resources so she can put them on the site.

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26 March 2013

Extracting the facts: an investor guide to disclosing risks from hydraulic fracturing operations

This guide by the Investor Environmental health network offers best practice recommendations to energy companies for reporting and reducing risks and impacts from natural gas operations in shale relying on hydraulic fracturing (commonly referred to as "fracking"). The guide can be a resource for companies responding to the Securities and Exchange Commission's growing interest in the environmental risks from fracturing operations, especially chemical and water management, and assists companies seeking to implement a November 2011 US Department of Energy advisory panel recommendation that companies "adopt a more visible commitment to using quantitative measures as a means of achieving best practice". The guide suggests goals, practices and indicators, providing existing examples from numerous companies.

Synopsis

The guide is organized around 12 core goals and supporting practices and indicators. These include:

1. Manage risks transparently and at Board level
2. Reduce surface footprint
3. Assure well integrity
4. Reduce and disclose all toxic chemicals
5. Protect water quality by rigorous monitoring
6. Minimize fresh water use
7. Prevent contamination from waste water
8. Minimize and disclose air emissions
9. Prevent contamination from solid waste and sludge residuals
10. Assure best in class contractor performance
11. Secure community consent
12. Disclose fines, penalties and litigation

Report webpage link

Report link

"There are already mechanisms in place": same old arguments against health impact assessment?

The Australian Senate

The Australian Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs released a report on Australia's domestic response to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health report "Closing the gap within a generation" last night. The response to the report seems lukewarm to me, though that may be coloured by my personal sense that this represents another missed opportunities for intersectoral action for health in Australia. The Social Determinants of Health Alliance released a fairly upbeat press release.

From an HIA and Health in All Policies perspective there are a few interesting sections. I'll post two reasonable lengthy excerpts below so you can make up your own mind. This is from the Government response section:

HIA 2013 - Geneva, Switzerland - 2-4 Oct 2013

Date for your diary; the HIA International Conference is in Geneva, Switzerland and will take place between the 2-4 October 2013.

The website is at:

www.hianet2013.net [English]

www.eis2013.net [French]

14 March 2013

Two HIA job opportunities in San Francisco

Thanks to Tim Choi for letting us know about this.

The Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability is seeking a full-time Data Analyst and a Communications Specialist, who will be hired through the San Francisco Public Health Foundation, to support the San Francisco Department of Public Health's health impact assessment (HIA) work for a five month period.

The Data Analyst will support data collection, analysis and visualization used in HIA to inform public policy on housing and neighborhood conditions that impact health.

The Communications Specialist will develop impactful "storytelling" and visualizations that can be used to support future HIA work and policy recommendations on healthy housing and/or other key healthy community design initiatives.

Both positions have an anticipated start date of April 1, 2013.

More details here

13 March 2013

Request for Proposals: Greenways and Green Infrastructure Health Impact Assessment

Shelby County Government (Tennessee) is seeking proposals from interested and qualified consultants or consultant teams to conduct an assessment of the impact on public health of greenways, green infrastructure, and other green spaces, including how existing and planned greenways and trails in the study area impact public health. The consultant or consultant team will develop an assessment tool that can be used by the community to consider the health impacts of greenways, green infrastructure, and green spaces as part of the Mid-South Regional Greenprint and Sustainability Plan process and beyond.

Bids will be accepted through March 28, 2013 at 4:00 p.m. Central Standard Time

For more information, please visit shelbycountytn.gov/bids.aspx?bidID=534 to download the full RFP and bidding instructions.

Via American Society of Landscape Architects