Does health impact assessment protect health? Is that the right question?

There's a thought-provoking piece at ABC Environment on Does environmental impact assessment protect the environment? The piece quotes several well-known Australian EIA academics about how well EIA in Australia is performing in terms of environmental protection.

There's no consensus in the piece about whether EIA is successfully protecting the environment or not, though some different ways of thinking about it are discussed. I think that's because the article dances around the core issue: what is the purpose of EIA? This may seem axiomatic and uncontested but I wonder if it's an under-examined difference between the goals and purpose of impact assessments.

The impact and effectiveness of health impact assessment: A conceptual framework

Many of you will have heard me present about the conceptual framework we developed for evaluating the impact and effectiveness of HIA over the past few years. The good news is our paper on it has been published:

Harris-Roxas B, Harris E (2012) The Impact and Effectiveness of Health Impact Assessment: A conceptual framework, Environmental Impact Assessment Review:accepted, in press. doi:10.1016/j.eiar.2012.09.003

It's the first empirically-derived conceptual framework for evaluating HIA that I'm aware of and may also be useful for planning and reporting on HIAs. It emphasises context, process and impacts as key domains and attempts to identify the broad range of factors that influence the effectiveness of HIAs.

Please let me know if you have any problems accessing the article so I can send you a copy.