Health Impact Assesment (HIA)

This is a good time to be developing your skills and knowledge in Health Impact Assessment HIA with the passage of the Public. In addition, there is a directive for Environment Impact Assessment has expanded the focus on health and wellbeing to consider population health. 

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a process which supports organizations to assess the potential consequences of their decisions on people’s health and well-being. It is increasingly recognized and understood that all policy areas have an impact on individuals and communities’ health and wellbeing outcomes. 

HIA as a key tool to be used to raise awareness and increase understanding across sectors on how policies, programs and services impact on health and wellbeing. In Australia HIA assesses the implications for health and wellbeing through the broad lens of the wider determinants of health and contributes to a reduction in health inequalities and inequities. HIA is advocated for and implemented at both strategic and operational levels across land use, planning, housing, waste, transport, regeneration and health sectors. 

HIA provides a systematic yet flexible and practical framework that can be used to consider the wider effects of local and national policies or initiatives and how they, in turn, may affect people’s health and wellbeing. An HIA gathers and assesses a range of evidence and this is then used to build in measures to maximize opportunities for health and wellbeing, to minimize any risks and inform the decision making process. It also provides a way of addressing the inequalities in health that continue to persist. It does this through collaboration and co-production which is built into the HIA process.