US Environmental Protection Agency Report on the Health Impacts of Climate Change in the USA

The US EPA has recently published its final report on the human health impacts of climate change in the USA entitled, "Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.6: Analyses and Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems".

This report focuses on impacts of global climate change, especially impacts on three broad dimensions of the human condition: human health, human settlements, and human welfare.

Climate change, interacting with changes in land use and demographics, will affect important human dimensions in the United States, especially those related to human health, settlements and welfare.

The challenges presented by population growth, an aging population, migration patterns, and urban and coastal development will be compounded by changes in temperature, precipitation, and extreme climate-related events. Climate change will affect where people choose to live, work, and play.

Among likely climate changes are:

• changes in the intensity and frequency of rainfall,
• more frequent heat waves, less frequent cold waves,
• more persistent and extreme drought conditions and associated water shortages,
• changes in minimum and maximum temperatures,
• potential increases in the intensity and frequency of extreme tropical storms,
• measurable sea-level rise and increases in the occurrence of coastal and riverine flooding.

In response to these anticipated changes, the United States may develop and deploy strategies for mitigating greenhouse gases and for adapting to unavoidable individual and collective impacts of climate change.

The report can be downloaded from

http://oaspub.epa.gov/eims/eimscomm.getfile?p_download_id=475107

ORISE Fellowship - USA

Application are invited for this fellowship which has a strong element of HIA.

It's at the CDC so if you're interested in broadening your horizons and spending some time doing HIA and public health work in the USA then this fellowship could be for you.

Title of Position: Physical Activity (PA) Fellow

This is a one-year position with possible future opportunities for longer-term full time employment.

Description:

The Physical Activity (PA) Fellow will work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity (DNPAO), Physical Activity and Health Branch on a variety of projects related to physical activity.

Responsibilities:

• Participates as a member of various project teams working on projects focused on how the built environment is related to various health outcomes, with an emphasis on physical activity.
• Analyze data from the Neighborhood Parks and Active Living study, a multi year study which examined physical activity in 12 parks in Atlanta.
• Write manuscripts and reports as needed
• Conduct Health Impact Assessments (HIA), commonly defined as “a combination of procedures, methods, and tools by which a policy, program, or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population.”
• Apply HIA to various projects and policies.
• Serve as a key member of the interdisciplinary HIA team learning and working on numerous aspects of performing a HIA.
• Develop partnerships and communicate effectively with non-traditional public health partners.
  
• Work closely with the primary supervisor in collaborating with external partners to help advance the field of HIA in the U.S.

Knowledge and Abilities:

• Demonstrated knowledge of data collection techniques and measurement tools.
• Demonstrated ability to interpret, synthesize and translate qualitative and quantitative research data.
• Demonstrated ability to write manuscripts and reports.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree, or equivalent in public health or relevant field and 2 years of related experience and completion of related coursework.
• Experience interpreting and translating research results.
• Experience writing about health related and/or nutrition, physical activity, or weight related topics.
• Ability to work tactfully and respectfully with a wide variety of individuals, including subject experts, internal and external partners.
• Ability to work independently.
• Ability to effectively organize a variety of complex tasks and complete them in a timely way.
• Knowledge of nutrition, physical activity, and/or weight maintenance and weight loss a plus.

Salary dependent on qualifications. Interested applicants are requested to submit a resume and cover letter to Candace Rutt, Ph.D. at - crutt(a)cdc.org - by August 29, 2008.

Good luck!

Good for Kids. Good for Life Equity Focused HIA Wins Minister's Award for Aboriginal Health

The Hunter New England Area Health Service's work on HIA has been recognised by receiving the 2008 New South Wales Health Minister's Award for Aboriginal Health. The Good for Kids, Good for Life Equity Focused Health Impact Assessment looked at potential health equity impacts of a $7.5 million childhood obesity prevention program, with specific reference to impact on Aboriginal children.

Minister Paul Lynch, NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, presented the Award on behalf of the NSW Minister for Health. "This project brings together a variety of agencies, community groups and industry to provide practical information... to make it easier for Aboriginal children to be active and eat well," Mr Lynch said.

The HIA was undertaken as part of NSW HIA Project with the support of the Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation (CHETRE).

The Minister's Award is the second HIA-related award for Hunter New England Area HEalth Service this year after they received the UNSW Research Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity's Health Impact Assessment Award in May.

About the Program
Good for Kids, Good for Life is Australia's largest ever population-based childhood obesity prevention trial. It brings together a variety of agencies, community groups and industry to provide practical information, as well as new programs and systems, to make it easier for children to be active and eat well. Good for Kids program undertook an equity-focused Health Impact Assessment (HIA) in order to improve the equity with which the program was delivered to Aboriginal children and non-Aboriginal children and ensure that its implementation did not exacerbate existing inequalities. The HIA produced over 80 recommendations. These recommendations were made to ensure Good for Kids strategies did not directly or indirectly exclude Aboriginal children and communities by failing to acknowledge and plan for differences in how health eating and physical activity is understood and approached in Aboriginal communities.

About the Award
The Minister's Award for Aboriginal Health is presented to the NSW Health Area Health Service or organisation that demonstrates the most outstanding commitment to improving Aboriginal health across a range of indices including excellence in program delivery, strengthening access to primary care, improved access to mainstream health services for Aboriginal people and collaborative partnership arrangement with Aboriginal people.

A full list of the 2008 New South Wales Aboriginal Health Award winners can be found on the NSW Health website. More information on equity focused HIA can be found on HIA Connect.

First HIA workshop for the Americas

We are excited to announce that the first-ever HIA Americas workshop will take place September 24-26, 2008 in the San Francisco Bay area.

This workshop will focus on the evolution/progress of HIA in North and South America. It is intended as a forum for current HIA practitioners to discuss regional issues of relevance. (We hope to stage a larger conference next year that can accommodate others who may be interested, such as those involved in EIA or SIA, community advocacy, etc.)

The workshop is being organized by Marla Orenstein and Murray Lee of Habitat Health Impact Assessment; Jonathan Heller of Human Impact Partners; Rajiv Bhatia and Lili Farhang of the San Francisco Department of Public Health; and Aaron Wernham of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council.

For more information, please visit habitatcorp.com/whats_new/conference.html or e-mail conference@habitatcorp.com

Developing public sociology through health impact assessment

Eva Elliott, Gareth Williams (2008)
Sociology of Health & Illness

Abstract

The renewed interest in ‘public sociology’ has sparked debate and discussion about forms of sociological work and their relationship to the State and civil society. Medical sociologists are accustomed to engaging with a range of publics and audiences inside and outside universities and are in a position to make an informed contribution to this debate. This paper describes how some of the debates about sociological work are played out through a ‘health impact assessment’ of a proposed housing renewal in a former coal mining community. We explore the dynamics of the health impact assessment process and relate it to wider debates, current in the social sciences, on the ‘new knowledge spaces’ within which contentious public issues are now being discussed, and the nature of different forms of expertise. The role of the ‘public sociologist’ in mediating the relationships between the accounts and interpretations of lay participants and the published ‘evidence’ is described as a process of mutual learning between publics, professionals and social scientists. It is argued that the continued existence and development of any meaningful ‘professional sociology’ requires an openness to a ‘public sociology’ which recognises and responds to new spaces of knowledge production.

Health impact assessment of global climate change: expanding on comparative risk assessment approaches for policy making

Jonathan Patz, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Holly Gibbs, and Rosalie Woodruff
Annual Review of Public Health, Vol. 29: 27-39 (Volume publication date April 2008) 

Abstract

Climate change is projected to have adverse impacts on public health. Cobenefits may be possible from more upstream mitigation of greenhouse gases causing climate change. To help measure such cobenefits alongside averted disease-specific risks, a health impact assessment (HIA) framework can more comprehensively serve as a decision support tool. HIA also considers health equity, clearly part of the climate change problem. New choices for energy must be made carefully considering such effects as additional pressure on the world's forests through large-scale expansion of soybean and oil palm plantations, leading to forest clearing, biodiversity loss and disease emergence, expulsion of subsistence farmers, and potential increases in food prices and emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Investigators must consider the full range of policy options, supported by more comprehensive, flexible, and transparent assessment methods.

Climate change heat and cold impacts likely to vary by country and context

Canadian Medicine, the blog of the Editor of the National Review of Medicine, reports a study which estimates that climate change impacts are likely to lead to a rise in deaths in Quebec during the summer which will not be counterbalanced by fewer lives lost during the predicted warmer winters.

The study, by a team of Laval University researchers reported last month in the International Journal of Health Geographics, predicted that by 2080 there would be 8-15% more deaths during hotter summers i.e. 540 extra deaths compared to their 1981-1999 baseline.

The study team argues that this is because Quebecers are acclimatised to the cold winters - through good thermal building regulations and cheap fuel among other things - they are less likely to die in the current cold winters unlike in Europe where studies have shown that hotter summers and milder winters while leading to more deaths in the summer would lead to fewer deaths in the mild winters and fewer deaths overall (as Euopeans living in more temperate regiosn are less acclimatised to cold winters). The study also used a slightly different methodology than the European studies which may also account for some/all of the difference found and the authors argue that there modelling is more accurate and has taken account of seasonal variation unlike some previous studies.

This Canadian study, and other studies in the USA with similar results, shows that local context in terms of social, cultural, environmental and economic factors as well as individual and societal behavioural change are likely to influence adaptation to the effects climate change and the potential positive and negative health impacts.

We therefore need to use contextualise general research on climate change impacts by taking into account social and behavioural factors to provide the best predictions of likely effects.

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The potential impact of climate change on annual and seasonal mortality for three cities in Québec, Canada
Bernard Doyon, Diane Bélanger and Pierre Gosselin
Published: 22 May 2008
International Journal of Health Geographics 2008, 7:23 doi:10.1186/1476-072X-7-23
Biomed Central (Open Access Journal)

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HIA Position in Liverpool, UK

Research Fellow (Health Impact Assessment)
£34,793 - £44,074 pa

IMPACT - International Health Impact Assessment Consortium, University of Liverpool

Location: Liverpool City Centre

Ref: R-567809/WWW

Closing date: 27 June 2008

You will work on health impact assessment consultancy projects
commissioned from IMPACT Plus and on our successful education and training programmes. You will have a higher degree in a relevant health, environmental or social science and advanced skills and experience in quantitative research methods. Experience of impact assessment and of project management, budgeting and training, as well as high level research and communication skills are essential. The post is available until 31 December 2009 with the possibility of extension.

Further details at:
http://www.liv.ac.uk/working/job_vacancies/research/R-567809.htm

Canadian Senate Mulls HIA Requirement

By Marla Orenstein, Habitat Health Impact Consulting

The Canadian Senate Subcommittee on Population Health has released an interim report on its study of the determinants of health. The purpose of the interim report is to outline the major issues facing the development of population health policy in Canada; to present policy options to improve overall health status and reduce health disparities; and to launch a public debate on the role of the federal government in population health policy.

One of the policy options considered in the report is establishing a federal requirement for the application of HIA to all new public policy proposals. This requirement - if implemented - would bring Canada in line with Sweden and New Zealand, where HIA has become an integral government process.

The report forms the basis for public hearings and consultations that will be held across Canada. Public input is being sought through June 30, 2008. Specific questions relevant to HIA that the subcommittee has raised include: Should the federal government establish a mechanism to allow for or require the application of HIA to all new public policy proposals? Would new legislation be required to do so? Is it realistic to envision HIA as a routine component of all new federal policies and programs? If HIA were to be introduced as a component of federal population health policy, what should be the role and responsibilities of Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and central agencies such as Finance Canada and the Treasury Board?

Do you have strong opinions about these issues? Even if you are not in Canada, I urge you to respond directly to the committee at SOC-AFF-SOC@sen.parl.gc.ca

Promoting Healthy Public Policy: New Zealand Health Impact Assessment Practitioners' Workshop

Promoting Healthy Public Policy
Health Impact Assessment Practitioners' Workshop
9 June 2008, Christchurch Convention Centre, 9.30am - 4.30pm

This event is being organised by the Health Impact Assessment Support Unit in collaboration with Christchurch Community Public Health to further develop the Unit's Learning by Doing approach: creating capacity and building an evidence base on HIA in New Zealand.

The outcomes for the event are to develop a learning network for HIA, share current work from around the country and increase collaborative working on HIA.

It should be attended by HIA practitioners, local, regional and central government people involved in policy making and those who want to improve their knowledge and understanding of HIA.

Deadline for registration is Friday 16 May 2008. More information from http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/hiasupportunit-newsandevents

World Health Day: The Health Impacts of Climate Change

Hurricanes destroy banana plantations in Honduras,
Severe droughts in Mali;
Flooding in Uganda

The theme of this year's World Health Day is protecting health from climate change. As you're all aware climate change represents a major challenge to public health in general and health impact assessment in particular, both in terms of adaptation and mitigation.

Coinciding with the 2008 World Health Day, China has announced that it is starting a program looking at the health impacts of climate change in conjunction with the World Health Organization and funded by the Spanish government.


World Health Day 2008 PSA


WHO Director-General Margaret Chan's World Health Day Message


Image Credits: Details at www.who.int/world-health-day/media/photo_gallery/en/index.html

Sydney: The Other City

For those in Sydney

Sydney: The Other City
Building a Sustainable Western Sydney by 2030

Tuesday, 29th and Wednesday 30th April, 2008
Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, 597 High Street, Penrith

Book time in your diaries now for this major two-day conference which will put the spotlight on Sydney's "Other City", Western Sydney.

Managing Western Sydney's growth is the major challenge to all levels of government as well as the community and private sectors if we are to build a region that is economically, socially, culturally and environmentally sustainable. A wide range of speakers including the Hon. Anthony Albanese MP, Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Prof. Peter Newman, Curtin University, Prof. Phil O'Neill, University of Western Sydney and Prof. Bill Randolph, University of NSW will address the regional sustainability challenge in series of presentations, panels and workshops. Other confirmed speakers include the Hon. Barbara Perry, NSW Minister for Western Sydney and the Hon. Paul Lynch MP, NSW Minister for Local Government.

I hope you can join our speakers as well as representaives of all three levels of Government and other key organisations to help in planning funding and building a sustainable future for Western Sydney.

Further information and registration details will be distributed shortly. In the meantime, please contact WSROC on 02 9671 4333 or esme@wsroc.com.au if you have any questions.

Clr Tony Hay
President
Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils Ltd
PO Box 63
Blacktown NSW 2148
Ph: +61 2 9671 4333
Fax: +61 2 9621 7741
Web: www.wsroc.com.au

World Water Day

Today is World Water Day, a United Nations initiative that grew out of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. Water looms as a major global issue in coming years, as this digram of population and water availability shows:

Source: Water for Life, UN Water: New York, 2005.
As you can see there are major disparities in the distribution of population and water availability around the globe. This is most glaringly the case in Asia, which has 60% of the world's population but only has 36% of global water resources.

Already a number of HIAs that have been conducted in NSW have highlighted the importance of water and water supply in protecting and promoting population health. Water is already a critical resource and it will only become more so in the future. It is incumbent on us as HIA practitioners to become familiar with the health impacts of changes to water availability.

Interesting Links

• Human Development Report 2006 - Beyond Scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis
  
• Water and Public Health - Special Issue of the Public Health Bulletin of South Australia [PDF]
  
• Health Impact Assessment - WHO Water Sanitation and Health (WSH)
  
• Urban Water - Tools and Resources

IAIA Health Quarterly March 2008

From Ben Cave, Co-Chair of the International Association for Impact Assessment Health Section

The latest issue of the IAIA HIA Quarterly is available for download from the IAIA website [PDF 380 Kb].

This issue includes the following articles:

• Ben Cave reports on a meeting between the World Health Organization, the
• International Finance Corporation and the World Bank;
• Maria João Heitor writes about a European meeting in Portugal looking at
• Health, and Health Systems, Impact Assessment;
• Mathias Wismar and Kelly Ernst write about a new publication on the
• effectiveness of HIA;
• Ben Harris-Roxas reports on the South East Asia and Oceania HIA Conference;
• Teresa Lavin and the HIA team at the Institute of Public Health in Ireland
• team describe the 8th International HIA conference held in Dublin;
• Dianne Katscherian describes the forthcoming session on climate change and
• health at IAIA08; and
• there is a round up of new publications and websites and forthcoming events.

We will soon issue a call for contributions to the next Quarterly via HIA listservs.

New South Wales HIA eNews Issue 19: HIA2007 Conference Special Issue

The latest copy of the New South Wales Health Impact Assessment Project eNews is available for download [PDF 960Kb].

In this issue:

• HIA2007 South East Asia and Oceania HIA Conference
• Health Impact Assessment: A Practical Guide
• Thailand: Recent Experiences
• Participate in the HIA2008 Conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand
• NSW Developmental HIA Sites : Coffs Harbour and Oran Park/Turner Road HIAs
• HIA Training 27-29 February 2008
• NZ HIA Support Unit : Building capacity for HIA in New Zealand
• To HIA or Not to HIA?
• Mental Wellbeing Impact Assessment A Toolkit from the UK
• What’s New? HIA Publications and Events

Past issues of the eNews can be downloaded from www.hiaconnect.edu.au/hia_e-news.htm

The New South Wales HIA eNews is produced by the Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity at the University of New South Wales, Australia as part of the NSW HIA Project funded by NSW Health.

Health Impact Assessment: A practical guide

The UNSW Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation and NSW Health have published a guide to undertaking health impact assessments. Health Impact Assessment: A practical guide is informed by the experiences of more than twenty health impacts assessments that have been undertaken or supported through the New South Wales Health Impact Assessment Project over the past four years. The guide aims to provide people a practical understanding of HIA, its process, concepts and theories.

A PDF version can be downloaded from http://www.hiaconnect.edu.au/files/Health_Impact_Assessment_A_Practical_Guide.pdf

For a print copy of the guide and/or more information about HIA please phone +61 2 9612 0762 or email s.m.green@unsw.edu.au.

An online version of the guide, with additional materials, links to further resources, and online exercises, is being developed and will be released in 2008 on HIA Connect.

Part One: Overview of Key Concepts
What is HIA?
Why undertake HIA?
What do we mean by ‘health’?
How is health created?
What are health impacts?
HIA is prospective
Broad participation
Equity

Part Two: The Steps in HIA
1. Screening
2. Scoping
3. Identification
4. Assessment
5. Decision-making and recommendations
6. Evaluation and follow-up