25 June 2007

South East Asian Regional Training Course on HIA

By Suphakij Nuntavorakarn and Nuntana Sabrum, Thai Healthy Public Policy Foundation

The Thai Health Systems Research Institute recently held an “HIA Interactive Training Course: A Learning Tool for Healthy Community and Society” in Khon Kaen province of Thailand.

The five-day training course was carried out during 15th to 19th October 2006 through a diversity of processes such as lectures, group work, open discussion and field visits in order to strengthen essential HIA skills and knowledge and to create framework for collaborative research and networking within Southeast Asia and Oceania.

Twelve regional and nineteen local health experts and practitioners attended the event. The regional participants were from Lao PDR, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Australia. Suggestions and ideas shared during the training have led to further HIA development in the region including the development of HIA training manual for developing countries, expert exchange and technical visits. One of the concrete outcomes is that more HIA work has been produced by the new faces from Mekong River Basin and will be presented in the upcoming international events such as the IAIA07 conference in South Korea and HIA2007 conference in Australia.

The training and subsequent activities are part of the “HIA Development for Developing Countries Project” supported by Thai-Health Global Linkage Initiative Program (T-GLIP), which is funded through the Thai Health Promotion Foundation. The need for the project arose from an increasing awareness of trans-boundary health impacts and the need to prevent and manage them through regional collaboration.

Copies of the training manual developed by the Healthy Public Policy Foundation are now available. Forfm more information contact Wipawa Chuenchit.

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting. I'm personally very interested in whther we can come together to develop an international training manual that covers both so-calkled developed and devloping countries given the increasing similarities in the health issues we are facing globally.

    No link on this page to where the training manual can be found electronically online. It would be great to have one.

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