Health Impact Assessment Blog

24 August 2011

The health impacts of people buying soda/soft drinks with food stamps?

The USDA recently rejected a proposal from New York City to ban the use of food stamps to purchase soda/soft drinks. Grist has much more on the decision. It made me wonder what would be the health impacts of such a proposal?

There seems to be an awful lot of paternalistic assumptions underpinning the proposal. Further I doubt it would have much of an impact at a population level. What are your thoughts?

Related: Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables [New York Times]

22 August 2011

A new guide to effective risk communication, one of the “greatest challenges” in public health

From Croakey:

Risk communication is one of the greatest challenges facing any public health agency; done badly it can cost lives, money, and reputations.

That’s according to a new guide released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and US Department of Health and Human Services, Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User’s Guide.

Its 242-pages includes chapters on ‘best guesses’ at best practices, communications design, and advice on implementing evidence-based communication.

It distinguishes risk communication from public affairs/PR communication by its commitment to accuracy and its avoidance of spin, although in Croakey’s experience these things are not

Continue reading at Croakey.

18 August 2011

Do not take it for granted: it is time to reinvent the toilet!

Lack of sanitation is affecting 2.6 billion people worldwide and it is one of the main contributors to burden of disease and health costs.

A multi-disciplinary team from the Water Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) at Loughborough University led by Professor M.Sohail has won a grant in an international competition to “re-invent the toilet” organised by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In the project’s first phase, the team will validate certain key principles to design a toilet, which will recover energy and other valuable resources from human excreta without disposing any hazardous waste that could threaten human and environmental health. Faeces will be transformed into a highly energetic combustible through a process combining hydrothermal carbonisation followed by combustion. The process will be powered by heat generated during the combustion phase of faeces processing.

The likely results are converting human waste into useful material for energy generation or soil conditioning, including water for hand-washing and other ablutions. The toilet must be able to work in both single-family and community environments and should cost just pennies a day per person to run.

More information here: http://tinyurl.com/3gnyg9p

17 August 2011

HIA is a benchmark indicator of sustainability for private companies’ investments

IFC, ICMM and its member mining companies, and other organizations have developed the Financial Evaluation tool for sustainability investment. The tool should help companies to assess the quality and effectiveness of their environmental, social, health and governance investments.

Health Impact Assessment is considered the most appropriate tool to deal with the community health issues and investments. The framework recognize the existence of different types of HIA from pure desk top exercise to comprehensive ones. The “best practice” score goes to HIA that adopt a broad definition of health and determinants of health, include enhancement opportunities and produce recommendations aligned with local government development plans and complements programs of other agencies.

More information on the framework here: http://fvtool.com/index.php

15 August 2011

HIA Vacancy: HIA Development Officer for South Wales

The Wales Health Impact Assessment Support Unit (WHIASU) is pleased to announce that a vacancy has arisen for a HIA Development Officer for South Wales. The post will be based at Public Health Wales (PHW) in Cardiff and will be for 22.5 hours per week.

Details are available on the WHIASU website and at NHS Jobs. The post will be at NHS Pay Band 6 and the closing date for applications is August 25th 2011. If you have any enquiries about the post, then please contact either Dr Eva Elliott (from 22nd August) or Liz Green.

Two New HIA Articles

I found two new HIA articles:

Estimating the potential health impact and costs of implementing a local policy for food procurement to reduce the consumption of sodium in the county of los angeles
Gase L, Kuo T, Dunet D, Schmidt S, Simon P, Fielding J.
American Journal of Public Health, 101(8): 1501-1507. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2011.300138

Health impact assessments a tool for designing climate change resilience into green building and planning projects
Houghton A.
Journal of Green Building, 6(2): 66-87. doi:10.3992/jgb.6.2.66

Please contact me if you have any trouble accessing them.

10 August 2011

Plugging Health into Planning: Evidence and practice

Plugging Health into Planning

From Salim:

The Local Government Group have a new short guide on integrating health and spatial planning.

It can be found at: http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/aio/28692849

Of note are the case studies Bristol, Cambridgeshire, Newham, NE Lincolnshire, Plymouth, Stockport, South Cambridgeshire and a host of smaller ones scattered throughout (Oxford, Stoke-on-Trent, Knowsley, Wakefield, Leicester, Darlington, and many more).

5 August 2011

Prediction Tournament

The US government is sponsoring a prediction tournament. From Freakonomics:

"Tetlock and a few colleagues are embarking on an ambitious new study of prediction — and even better, that they’re looking for volunteers. Specifically, they’re looking for people “who have a serious interest in and knowledge about world affairs, politics, and global economic matters and are interested in testing their own forecasting and reasoning skills.”

Looks like it'll be interesting. You can sign up here.

3 August 2011

HIA 3 Day Training Course, Sydney 5-7 October 2011

The University of New South Wales is running a three day training course in health impact assessment in Sydney from 5-7 October 2011. The flyer for the course can be downloaded from:

http://benhr.net/pGIJ0I

If you're interested or have any queries please contact Mary Knopp on +62 2 9612 0779 or email mary.knopp@sswahs.nsw.gov.au

Social Impacts Alert for July

Allison Ziller does such a terrific job with her Social Impacts Alerts. Here's the one for July:

Fun
A ‘transfer accelerator’ or a bit of urban fun?: http://popupcity.net/2011/07/slide-to-the-train/

In The Press
Adele Horin, The dark legacy of child abuse, SMH 2-3 July 2011, “A hidden history of child abuse may lie behind the myriad social problems that afflict Australia, from its high rate of depression to its high rate of homelessness. We are more aware, partly thanks to the wayward Catholic clergy, of the existence of child abuse. But that has not translated into an understanding of its pervasive and long-lasting legacy.” http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-dark-legacy-of-child-abuse-20110701-1gv68.html#ixzz1RtYWQG67

Deborah Smith, Dementia is a major killer poorly understood, SMH 4 July 2011: “The world needs more famous people to speak out about their dementia, according to a visiting brain expert. Baroness Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said there was an ''inexplicable and disturbing disparity'' between the amount of money spent on research on dementia compared with other conditions such as cancer and heart disease. Greater awareness of brain degeneration might help overcome this.” http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/appeal-to-hear-the-silent-voices-of-dementia-20110703-1gxfv.html#ixzz1Rta9V4Yi

HIA Gateway: What's new for July

29 July 2011

Alaskan govt publishes voluntary guidelines on health impact assessment

The State of Alaska has published a toolkit on HIA in Alaska. It's available from:

http://www.epi.alaska.gov/hia/toolkit.htm

These voluntary guidelines are designed for assessment of major projects. The description of the HIA process is a bit baffling and it tends to focus on health risks, probably not inappropriately. It's worth a look.

25 July 2011

IPIECA Ecosystem Services Guidelines

IPIECA, the oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues, has released an interesting and useful set of guidelines for ecosystem services.

Health specialists have a responsibility to engage with biodiversity issues to a greater extent. This is a practical way to get started.

24 July 2011

The Folly of Prediction

There's an interesting one hour audio program over at Freakonomics Radio on The Folly of Prediction. It's worth a listen for anyone with an interest in impact assessment.

17 July 2011

New Thai Blog on HIA and Healthy Public Policy

Our friend and colleague Decharut Sukkumnoed has started a new blog in Thai at:

http://decharut.blogspot.com

There's some great stuff there, for example this post on the promise and potential of ecocities.

1 July 2011

This month's news from the Health Impact Assessment Gateway

Reports
Library one-to-one IT Training: MWIA
http://www.apho.org.uk/resource/item.aspx?RID=105167

Guides
Steps to healthy planning: proposals for action
http://www.apho.org.uk/resource/item.aspx?RID=105724

Using IT for public consultation
http://www.apho.org.uk/resource/item.aspx?RID=104960

Evaluation
Innovation & learniing report: N. Staffordshire HIAs
http://www.apho.org.uk/resource/item.aspx?RID=105725

Policy Documents
A strategy for social mobility (England)
http://www.apho.org.uk/resource/item.aspx?RID=105060

Training Courses
Short course in HIA, 21st to 24th June, Australia
http://www.apho.org.uk/resource/item.aspx?RID=105028

Events
High Speed Rail 2: Land Use & Transport Impacts, 6th July, Birmingham
http://www.apho.org.uk/resource/item.aspx?RID=105111