Tool summary

Name of the tool
Health Impact Assessment (HIA)

Description of the tool
HIA can be defined as the estimation of the effects of a specified action on the health of a defined population.
Its purpose is:
• to assess the potential health impacts – positive and negative – of policies, programmes and projects; and
• to improve the quality of public policy decision making through recommendation to enhance predicted positive health impacts and minimise negative ones.
HIA has much in common with the more established EIA and although it draws on a number of traditional research methods, it is more than just a monitoring and evaluation tool. HIA aims to provide a practical framework for identifying health impacts and ways of addressing them. It is also based on a number of key issues:
• a social model of health and well-being;
• an explicit focus on equity and social justice;
• a multidisciplinary, participatory approach;
• the use of qualitative as well as quantitative evidence;
• explicit values and openness to public scrutiny.

Specific topic
It looks at the effects of a specified action on the health of a defined population.

Sector/s of use

Waste	Energy	Water	Transport	Green/Blue	Building & Land use
1	1	1	1	0	1

M - main sector, 1 - sub sector and 0 - n/a

Scale of applications

Component	Building	Neighbourhood	City	Region
0	0	1	0	0