Please find attached the final report of the HIA’11 conference held in April in Granada.
For those of you who could not attend, I take the opportunity to remind you that all videos from plenary sessions are available in original/dubbed version at the EASP live stream webpage together with the Powerpoint presentations and the book of abstracts, among other conference materials.
This is a breath-taking MSc thesis video showing the intertwined and interconnected nature of danger and safety on a typical New York junction (read pretty much any major urban centre around the world).
Simply amazing both for what it shows and as a work of art in it's own right.
[Ron Gabriel via Kottke via Gizmodo]
The 3rd HIA of the Americas Conference Workshop will be held on October 17th-18th at the California Endowment in Oakland, CA.
It is a two-day workshop that aims to provide leadership to HIA practitioners by offering a forum for HIA practitioners to network, contribute to progress in the field, and share strategies to elevate the practice of HIA. The workshop will also promote excellence in HIA by sharing best practices, discussing issues and challenges, and disseminating newly revised practice standards and guidance.
It is intended for current practitioners of Health Impact Assessment in North, Central or South America and the content will therefore be focused on HIA practice in the Americas.
Registration is limited to 120 participants, and will be taken on a first-come, first-served basis. Participation will be limited to no more than 3 individuals per organisation. Non-Americas participants are welcome.
For more information and to register, click here.
Based on your responses to the registration questions, a member of the planning committee may contact you to discuss your participation.
The deadline to register is Monday, August 8, 2011.
If you have additional questions, you can contact the organisers directly at registration@humanimpact.org.
Assessing the health and equity impacts of different policy options
If reducing health equities is identified as a high level priority across policy-making, there is the possibility to make use of a range of tools to consider equity impacts of policies of various sectors. Two key approaches are the use of health impact assessment and health equity assessment tools. Gender mainstreaming and human rights situation analysis tools can also contribute.
Health impact assessment draws from the methodologies developed for environmental impact assessment, also now being used for poverty and social impact assessments. Not all health impact assessment methodologies, however, focus on health inequities. Equity-focused health impact assessment is a structured process for assessing the potential health equity impacts of a proposal (positive and negative, intended and unintended) and making recommendations for improving the proposal.
The HIA Bibliography has been updated from July 2010 to December 2010, and 26 new references on HIA, SEA and MWIA have been added.
Improving the consideration on mental health in health impact assessments has long been discussed as an area of practice that requires more attention. Dr Lynn Todman and Dr Eunha Kim from the Institute on Social Exclusion at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago have written a guest post on their work on Mental Health Impact Assessment (MHIA).
From the US Health Impact Project:
A bill in Oregon that would provide incentives to deliver fresh local food to schools would improve the health of the state’s residents and, at the same time, create hundreds of new farm-industry jobs over a five- to 10-year period, according to a study released by Upstream Public Health in Portland.
The researchers received a grant from the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, to conduct a health impact assessment (HIA) on the Farm to School and School Garden legislation, HB 2800.
An HIA is a study that explores the health impacts of a proposed project, plan or policy in areas that might not otherwise take full account of the health implications—like education, land use, agriculture or energy—and then makes recommendations to maximize the benefits and minimize any potential risks.
Read more about this HIA, including the full report
“This report is especially valuable because it shows how health impact assessment can help policy makers find unexpected ways to improve health and, at the same time, provide economic benefits—something that is more important now than ever given the current fiscal climate,” said Aaron Wernham, M.D., director of the Health Impact Project.
Farm to School and School Garden Legislation, Oregon HB 2800 , as introduced
The bill would reimburse schools—equivalent to 15 cents per lunch and seven cents per breakfast—for purchasing Oregon food products and provide competitive education grants to schools to support teaching gardens and cross-curricular nutrition education activities that could help kids learn about local food production and increase their preference for fruits and vegetables. The funding for the program would come from the Economic Development Fund, which is a portion of Oregon’s Lottery Fund.
The researchers conducted interviews with stakeholders, reviewed existing research on the health impacts of Farm to School programs and collaborated with an economist to analyze the bill’s impact on employment in the state.
The HIA concluded that HB 2800, if enacted as introduced, would:
“We found that this bill would offer the state of Oregon an economic benefit and, at the same time, provide a number of important health benefits—for example, shaping children's preferences for healthy food,” says Tia Henderson, Ph.D., research coordinator at Upstream Public Health and co-author of the report.
The Upstream Public Health HIA is one of 13 demonstration grants funded by the Health Impact Project. The other HIAs address a range of decisions, including a light rail corridor connecting the Twin Cities in Minnesota and a plan to re-develop an old automobile factory site in Atlanta, which would result in over 6.5 million square feet of office space, hotels, shopping and parking facilities. The project is accepting proposals through June 1, 2011 for its next round of grants.
“This is a fast-growing field, with health impact assessments being conducted all across the country,” said Dr. Wernham. “We are witnessing a rapid increase in demand—and support—for this important policy-making tool, including funding at the local, state and national levels.”
For more information about health impact assessments, to submit a proposal or to see an interactive, searchable map of ongoing and completed HIAs in the United States, please visit: www.healthimpactproject.org.
The Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, is a leading national initiative dedicated to promoting the use of health impact assessments in the United States. Learn more at www.healthimpactproject.org.
"...a new ICM poll shows that 72% of the public think high pay makes Britain a grossly unequal place to live, while 73% say they have no faith in government or business to tackle excessive pay."Meanwhile the Guardian data blog shows that the proportion of national income controlled by both the top 1% and top 10% is rising sharply.
..Australia has become a more divided and less fair society since the 1980s.It's interesting that whilst there is widespread concern about increasing inequalities there appears to be very little political will to tackle the issue.
... new post-conference materials have been posted at the live-streaming website created to follow the conference on line (http://si.easp.es/eis2011/). More precisely, you’ll find there the authors' presentations in electronic version, the videos of all plenary sessions (currently in original version, soon also available in a dubbed version), the book of abstracts and a photo gallery. Additional information/documentation will be posted in the coming weeks.
