Health Impact Assessment (HIA)

Health impact assessment (HIA) is “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” (World Health Organization, 1999). HIAs characteristic of combining procedures and tools is reflective of its nature as “a multidisciplinary process within which a range of evidence about the health effects of a proposal is considered in a structured framework, …based on a broad model of health which proposes that economic, political, social, psychological, and environmental factors determine population health “(Northern and York Public Health Observatory, 2004).

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References

European Centre for Health Policy, WHO Regional Office for Europe. (1999) Gotherburg Consensus Paper. Health impact assessment: main concepts and suggested approach. Brussels: WHO