The central questions of an HIA are: What does this planned project or policy hope to do? What are the intended and unintended consequences
Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) are commonly used Public Health tools to consider the public health
impacts of planned projects or policies. A well-done HIA collects information about community concerns and
puts those concerns in communication with a thorough review of community statistics, existing policies, and
historic trends. The results of an HIA often include a set of recommendations for improving a project or policy
in light of the data and research gathered.
The central questions of an HIA are:
What does this planned project or policy hope to do?
What are the intended and unintended consequences of this project or policy?
What can we do to maximize the positive effects of the project or policy and minimize the negative
effects?
HIAs range in scope and required resources from “desktop” assessments, such as the one we will complete for
this project, to year-long, expensive endeavors that include extensive primary data collection. As you’ll see in
the resources provided, HIAs typically contain six steps: screening, scoping, assessment, recommendations,
reporting, and evaluation. For the purposes of this short course, we will be focusing mostly on the middle three
steps: scoping, assessment, and recommendations.
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