Health impact assessment (HIA) can ensure that health is a core element of sustainable urban planning. Based on the experience of the NSW HIA Project, we discuss the current strengths of HIA and challenges facing it as an urban sustainability tool across five areas: the use of evidence; integrating HIA with environmental impact assessments; including consideration of equity; recognising wider d...

The experience of health impact assessment (HIA) in NSW has shown that it is possible to incorporate considerations of health impacts into decision-making concerning urban planning. In NSW, the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 is the regulatory framework governing urban planning. This legislative system provides opportunities for HIA and the consideration of health impacts as part...

A situation analysis was undertaken to assess impediments to health impact assessment (HIA) in the South-East Asia Region of WHO (SEARO). The countries of the region were assessed on the policy framework and procedures for HIA, existing infrastructure required to support HIA, the capacity for undertaking HIA, and the potential for intersectoral collaboration. The findings show that environmenta...

The determinants of health are those factors that have the potential to affect health, either positively or negatively, and include a range of personal, social, economic, and environmental factors. In the practice of health impact assessment (HIA), the stage at which the determinants of health are considered for inclusion is during the scoping step. The scoping step is intended to identify how ...

The nine health impact assessment (HIA) case studies in this issue represent a considerable contribution to the HIA literature and provide a number of lessons. These lessons include the value of using evidence in HIA to aid decision-making; the various forms that stakeholder and community involvement in HIA can take; and the fact that HIA can act as a catalyst for intersectoral engagement. They...

The value of health impact assessment (HIA) to sectors outside the health domain is increasingly being recognised. A Victorian study explored the application of HIA within a regeneration context. What emerged is a complex analysis of the practical dimensions of applying HIA in this context.

OBJECTIVES This paper aimed to employ subject matter experts (SMEs) to assess the extent to which the Korean version of the short-form of the OHIP (OHIP-14 K) is culturally valid and equivalent in Korean. METHODS We approached 17 bilingual Korean SMEs from which 10 independently rated the clarity, relevance, and cultural equivalence of the OHIP-14 K. SME's varied between 10 and 41 years of cl...

The first health impact assessment (HIA) performed on a high level local government policy in New Zealand was undertaken on the Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy in 2005. This report describes its development and implementation and the results from the process evaluation including some recommendations made in the assessment. We concluded that HIA is a useful tool for local governm...

Health impact assessment (HIA) methods are used to evaluate the impact on health of policies and projects in community design, transportation planning, and other areas outside traditional public health concerns. At an October 2004 workshop, domestic and international experts explored issues associated with advancing the use of HIA methods by local health departments, planning commissions, and o...

Health impact assessment (HIA) is a prospective decision-making aid tool that aims to improve the quality of policies, programmes or projects through recommendations that promote health. It identifies how and through which pathways a decision can impact a wide range of health determinants and seeks to define the distribution of effects within populations, thereby raising the issue of equity. HI...