Health Impact Assessment: Current practice internationally

Mirko Winkler led a team that undertook a survey of 122 HIA practitioners across 29 countries. The findings highlight that:

• HIA is being used worldwide
• Capacity is concentrated at the beginner and intermediate levels, though a higher proportion of respondents from Europe reported having more than ten years of HIA experience
• there is a need for more advanced capacity building and training offerings internationally
• strengthening the policies and legal frameworks under which HIAs are undertaken remains relevant.

Twenty-four percent of respondents were from the Asia Pacific, and practices across our region are reflected in the overall results.

Health Impact Assessment: A practical guide that I wrote with Patrick Harris, Elizabeth Harris, and Lynn Kemp (Harris et al. 2007) was identified as the fifth most-used HIA guidance internationally, after WHO guides, Martin Birley’s book on HIA (Birley, 2011), and the IAIA Best Practice Principles (Quigley et al. 2006).

In general respondents were split on whether HIA’s use is continuing to increase or has stagnated, a debate that has relevance across the Asia Pacific region. Of particular important to our region, the paper emphasises that:

Finally, there is an increasing recognition of the role that biodiversity and ecosystem services play in the relationship “healthy planet, healthy people”, and the role that impact assessments play. In an outlook for the future, and additionally to providing a framework for safeguarding health in sustainable development, HIA has the potential to be contributory to the operationalisation of “planetary health”

References

Quigley, R., L. den Broeder, P Furu, A Bond, B Cave, and R Bos. “Health Impact Assessment International Best Practice Principles.” Fargo, North Dakota: International Association for Impact Assessment, 2006.

Winkler, Mirko S., Peter Furu, Francesca Viliani, Ben Cave, Mark Divall, Geetha Ramesh, Ben Harris-Roxas, and Astrid M. Knoblauch. “Current Global Health Impact Assessment Practice.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 9 (April 25, 2020): 2988. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17092988.

Harris, P., B. Harris-Roxas, E. Harris, and L. Kemp. “Health Impact Assessment: A Practical Guide.” Sydney: UNSW Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity and NSW Health, 2007.

Martin Birley. Health Impact Assessment: Principles and Practice. London: Routledge, 2011.

They're world leaders in health impact assessment. Find out more about HIA in Thailand.

Thailand is a world leader in health impact assessment. I've learned a lot from colleagues in the National Health Commission Office and the Healthy Public Policy Foundation over the eight years that we've worked together. They have a sophisticated and nuanced approach to HIA that recognises that there's more than one way to undertake HIA and that HIA is rarely an end in itself.

As I've spoken to colleagues elsewhere I've been dismayed about how little they've engaged with the work that's happened in Thailand. Often this is due to language barriers (few people read Thai outside Thailand), assumptions that little can be learned outside western countries (this is flat-out wrong), or a view that Thailand is a "special case" (it is, but we can still learn from its unique circumstances).

Ignorance is no longer an excuse however! The National Health Commission Office for Thailand has put together an excellent series of English language publications on their experiences with HIA. I urge you to take a look. The books and reports chronicle the details and experiences of HIA in Thailand. There's a lot to learn from these publications.

The NHCO website also includes publications on healthy public policy, Thailand's incredible and inspirational system of Health Assemblies, and their National Health Act.