Mission

The mission of the HIA work at UC Berkeley is to promote the growing practice of HIA in the US through the development of assessment methodology and tools, and education.

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a participatory process, in which the potential health impacts of a proposed policy, program, or project are evaluated. The assessment is carried out with the aim of informing decision-making on how adverse health outcomes may be avoided and how opportunities for improving health may be realized.  Boader than traditional health risk assessment, HIA considers cumulative impacts to health.

Research and Practice

Oak to Ninth Avenue HIA

The Oak to Ninth Avenue HIA was a HIA project that developed by students in the HIA course at Berkeley in 2006.  The assessment evaluate the potential health outcomes of a proposed mixed-use redevelopment of a 60+ acre site in Oakland, CA.  The assessment evaluated the broad cumulative impacts of the proposed redevelopment in terms of noise, air pollution, pedestrian injury, healthy housing, access to green space, and a democratic process.  The HIA has been recognized as one of the first examples of HIA practice in the US.

Link to the full HIA

Seto, EYW, Health Impact Assessments, Moving Forward, a conference on healthy solutions for communities impacted by trade, ports, and goods movement, Carson, CA, December 1, 2007.

 

Seto, EYW, The Oak to Ninth Avenue Health Impact Assessment: lessons learned in teaching and practice, Health Impact Assessments: Reuniting Public Health and Planning for Healthy Places, Presentation given at American Planning Association’s 2007 National Planning Conference, Philadelphia, PA, USA, April 17, 2007. 

Dannenberg, A.L., Bhatia, R., Cole, B.L., Heaton, S.K., Feldman, J.D., Rutt, C.D. (2008) Use of Health Impact Assessment in the U.S. 27 Case Studies, 1999–2007, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 34 (3): 241–256. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2007.11.015

MacArthur BART Transit-Oriented Village HIA

The second HIA class project, students assessed the health impacts of redevelopment of the MacArthur BART station into a transit-oriented village.  Building upon the previous Oak to Ninth Ave HIA, new assessments for this project included transportation, retail services, school and childcare access, community violence, and social cohesion.

Link to the full HIA

 

HIA of Traffic Impacts in the Excelsior District

Led by PODER (People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights) and community members, UC Berkeley students and researchers participated in a retrospective HIA of the impacts of freeway 280 and traffic thoroughfares on the health of a community.  We used community-based health impact assessment methods to assess traffic impacts in this neighborhood, including door-to-door community surveys, traffic counts, community photography, oral histories, outdoor air quality and noise modeling and exposure assessment, pedestrian environmental quality evaluation, historical review (hospitalization data, U.S. Census data, and traffic-related injury data).

Link to the full HIA

Sciammas, C., Rivard, T., Wier, M., Seto, E., Bhatia, R., (2008) Traffic Causes Death and Disease in San Francisco Neighborhood, Race, Poverty, and the Environment, 15(1): 77-78. [link]

 

San Francisco Community Noise Assessment

We developed a GIS implementation of the Traffic Noise Model to evaluate community noise exposures and associated risk of high-annoyance for San Francisco, CA.   We found that as many as 1 in 6 residents may be at risk of high annoyance.  Moreoever, we found that considerable neighborhood-level inequities may exist in traffic noise annoyance. 

Seto, E.Y.W., Holt, A, Rivard, T, Bhatia, R (2007), Spatial distribution of traffic induced noise exposures in a US city: an analytic tool for assessing the health impacts of urban planning decisions, International Journal of Health Geographics, 6(24).  http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/6/1/24

San Francisco Public Housing HIA

A new project funded in 2008 by the US CDC establishes UC Berkeley and its HIA collaborators as a technical support center for community groups conducting their first HIA.  The grant supports our work with new community groups to assess the health impact of public housing redevelopment in San Francisco.  The project will consider the new assessment tools for displacement through gentrification, obesogenic factors, and indoor housing conditions. 

Education

Link to the HIA course syllabus

Collaborators

• UC Berkeley School of Public Health (Seto, Jerrett)
• San Francisco Dept of Public Health (Bhatia, Rivard, Wier, Gaydos, Farhang)
• Human Impact Partners (Heller)
• UC Berkeley Center for Weight and Health (Crawford)
• Students from the UCB HIA course

Funding

• US Centers for Disease Control  (CDC HIA)