Health Impact Assessment
UC Berkeley School of Public Health 267D / City and Regional Planning TBD
The goal of this course is to expose students to the rationale, practice and potential of Health Impact Assessment (HIA) with a focus on its application to California’s land use and transportation policy making. HIA is an emerging policy evaluation practice that aims to inform policy decisions in many sectors in order to promote the conditions required for optimal health. HIA encompasses diverse methods, tools, and processes by which the potential health impacts of policies, plans, programs, and projects and policies may be evaluated. In this course, students consider the reasons for doing HIA, review a range of HIA case studies and analytic methods, and consider the potential of HIA as well as the needs and challenges for practice development. As a class project, students also critically evaluate a local, regional, state, or national policy, project, or plan, identifying health benefits and consequences, potential approaches to quantify or qualify how the project may change health determinants, and recommendations for alternatives or improvements.
Course Objectives
- Understand and compare the range of practices used to conduct Health Impact Assessments in the US and internationally;
- Identify the opportunities and obstacles for using the National Environmental Policy Act and similar State-level laws as vehicles for health and social analysis;
- Examine emerging techniques to model the nexus between changes in the built environment and health determinants such as air quality, noise, walkability, and adequate housing
- Examine the Healthy Development Measurement Tool and applications to land use plans;
- Explore elements of politically relevant analysis, including stakeholder and decision-maker buy-in, the use of experiential knowledge, and effective framing and communication;
- Conduct one original analysis of a contemporary public agency policy, program, or project decision, examining one or more pathways between the decision and health outcomes
Instructors
Office Hours: by appt.
Class Format and Grading
Instruction will consist of one three hour of lecture and discussion each week. Assigned exercises will provide hands-on experience with steps and tools in the HIA process.
Basis of grading
- Exercises/Class Participation: 50%
- Project presentation: 15%
- Project report: 35%
HIA Class Project
Working as a team, members of the class will conduct a “hand’s on” HIA on a contemporary policy, program, or project. The typical course will involve: the selection of a policy, plan, or project for evaluation; a scoping exercise to identify potential impacts, mitigations, and research questions, potentially using a structured checklist; a description of pathways between the project, health determinants and health outcomes; review of evidence supporting pathways; participation in public meetings; a review of health analyses in an existing environmental impact report; research including field measurements, qualitative interviews, document review, and qualitative analysis; an application or the healthy development measurement tool or another similar structured HIA instrument; report preparation; and communication of findings to decision-makers and other stakeholders. Individual students will be responsible for components of the class project analysis. The deadline for turning in each student’s assignment/component of the final project is 2 days after last day of class.
Lecture Schedule
Lectures vary from year to year. Lectures cover the basic HIA steps: screening, scoping, assessment, and communication. Lectures also cover quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, as well as issues of uncertainty and validity. Moreover, lectures typically include discussion of social and environmental justice and the need for assessment of distributional impacts. Additionally, lectures on institutationalization and the practice of HIA in the context of Environmental Impact Assessment are provided.
Texts on Impact Assessment
- Vanclay F and Bronstein DA (eds), (1995) Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- Kemm JR, Parry J, Palmer S, (eds), (2004) Health Impact Assessment: Concepts, Theory, Techniques, and Applications, Oxford University Press.
- Bass RE, Herson AI, Bogdan KM (1999) The Ceqa Deskbook: And 2001 Supplement, Solano Press Books
- Becker HA & Vanclay F. The International Handbook of Social Impact Assessment.: Conceptual and Methodological Advances. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar; 2003.
- Burdge RJ. A Conceptual Approach to Social Impact Assessment. Social Middleton: Ecology Press; 1998
- Ståhl, T, Wismar, M & Ollila, E, et al. (2006), Health in All Policies: Prospects and potentials, Helsinki: Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
- Birley, M (1995), The Health Impact Assessment of Development Projects, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
Web Resources on Impact Assessment
Government
University HIA Websites
- Deakin University, HIA Unit (Melbourne, Australia)
- Netherlands RIVM HIA Database
- University of Birmingham, HIA Research Unit (Birmingham, UK)
- University of California Los Angeles, HIA Project (Los Angeles, USA)
- University of Liverpool, IMPACT - International Health Impact Assessment Consortium (World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Health Impact Assessment), Division of Public Health (Liverpool, UK)
- University of New South Wales, HIA Connect, Health Inequalities Program (CHETRE), Research Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity, Faculty of Medicine (Sydney, Australia)
- University of California at Berkeley, Health Impact Group and Health Impact Assessment Course, School of Public Health, (Berkeley, California, USA)
General Articles and Print Resources on Public Health and the Built Environment
Air Quality Land Use Handbook: A Community Health Perspective. California Environmental Protection Agency Air Resources Board 2005CEQA and Land Use Mitigation, Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality District,
http://www.airquality.org/ceqa/index.shtml
Emission Reduction plan for Ports and Goods Movement, California, Air Resources Board. http://www.arb.ca.gov/planning/gmerp/gmerp.htm
Arnstein S. A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Planning Association. 1969; 35(4):216-224.
Bingler, S; Quinn, L, and Sullivan, K. Schools as Centers of Community: A Citizen’s Guide For Planning and Design”; National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, Coalition for Community Schools, Building Educational Success Together; Knowledge Works Foundation, Council of Educational Facility Planners; Washington D.C., 2003
Corburn J. Confronting the challenges in reconnecting urban planning and public health. American Journal of Public Health. 2004; 94: 541-546.
Corburn J. Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.
Dannenberg AL, Jackson RJ, Frumkin H, Schieber RA, Pratt M, Kochtitzky C, Tilson HH. The impact of community design and land-use choices on public health: a scientific research agenda. American Journal of Public Health. 2003;93:1500-8.
Dora C, Phillips M. Transport, environment and health. Copenhagen: World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe; 2000. http://www.who.dk/document/e72015.pdf
Douglas M, Thomson H, Gaughan M. Health Impacts of Housing Improvements: A Guide. Public Health Institute of Scotland. Glasgow. 2003.
Ewing R, Frank L, Kreutzer R. Understanding the Relationship Between Public Health and the Built Environment: A Report to the LEED-ND Core
Committee. 2006. Avaiable at http://www.cnu.org/aboutcnu/index.cfm?formAction=initiative_detail&initiative_id=55
Frank Fischer. Citizens, Experts and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge. Duke University Press, 2000.
Frumkin H, Frank L, Jackson R. Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities. Washington, DC: Island Press; 2004.
Fung, A, Wright, EO. Deepening Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. Politics and Society. 2001; 29(1):5-41.
Guidelines for Community Noise World Health Organization. 1999
Healthy Parks Healthy People: The Health Benefits of Contact with nature in a park context. Deakin University and Parks Victoria, 2002.
Jacobs J. The Death and Life of American Cities. New York: Random House; 1961.
Kawachi I, Berkman LF. Neighborhoods and Health. New York: Oxford University Press; 2003.
Keeley J, Scoones I. Understanding Environmental Policy Processes: A Review. Working Paper 89 Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. Sussex 1999
Our Built and Natural Environments: USEPA Washington DC 2001 http://www.smartgrowth.org
Prevention Institute The Built Environment and Health: 11 Profiles of Neighborhood Transformation http://www.preventioninstitute.org/builtenv.html
Rebecca Flournoy and Irene Yen The Influence of Community Factors on Health: An Annotated Bibliography. Oakland: Policy Link, 2004. http://www.policylink.org/CHB/
Sabel C, Fung A, Karkkainen B. Beyond Backyard Environmentalism. Boston: Beacon Press; 2000.