''Health Impact Assessments Take on Broader Role in Cities and States''
Aaron Wernham, director of the Health Impact Project discusses the benefits of health impact assessments in this edition of Governing.
More info"In 2007, developers of a planned senior-housing project in Oakland, California, decided to move the entrance from adjacent to a busy highway to a quiet courtyard. The change would make it safer for residents as they walked to and from home. The idea, from an Oakland-based group called Human Impact Partners, addressed a small but nonetheless important health concern that might otherwise have been ignored.
A report released yesterday by the National Academies' National Research Council (NRC) provides a ringing endorsement of such efforts, called a Health Impact Assessment (HIA). The report not only provides guidelines for conducting these analyses, but also argues for their value on both public and private construction projects, from urban farmers' markets to federal highways.
The biggest obstacle facing HIAs may be the status quo, although the report notes that federal laws could already accommodate them. The U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to conduct environmental impact statements on threats or boons to "the quality of the human environment" as well as the natural environment. That requirement has largely fallen by the wayside, says committee member Aaron Wernham, director of the Health Impact Project, a joint venture of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helped pay for the study. He says the problem is often that particular mission agencies lack the expertise to explore the health consequences of their actions. "Health needs to be at the table," says Wernham.
Still, some experts have reservations about rolling HIAs into the NEPA process. "People are concerned that health impact assessments not become overly bureaucratic and not be another box that's checked off in a process," says Wernham."
- Date added:
- Sep 9, 2011
- Project:
- Health Impact Project
- Topic:
- Health Impact Assessment
- Related Expert:
- Aaron Wernham
Related Resources
New Projects Bringing Health Considerations into Education, Energy Policy, and Other Decisions
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More infoThe Rise of HIAs in the United States
The field of health impact assessments is growing quickly as more and more cities and states are finding HIAs to be a useful way to bring health ino the conversation. View the infographic for more information about the rise of HIAs in the United States. More infoNational Public Health Week
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More info''Taking Health Into Account''
Aaron Wernham, director of the Health Impact Project, explains how by systematically assessing the health risks of development decisions upfront, health impact assessments can prevent costly and harmful mistakes.
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"A study released late last month delivers the message: Make competitive foods offered in schools healthier, too. The study was a collaboration between the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and came from two projects, the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project – the director, Jessica Donze Black, is a University of Delaware graduate – and the Health Impact Project."
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