Development of low resource HIA guide
Project Status
Completed
Investigators
Ben Harris-Roxas, Tessa Wood, Katie Hirono, Fiona Haigh, Marilyn Wise, Evelyne De Leeuw
Rationale
Health Impact Assessments (HIA) have been proven to improve health benefits and reduce harms of intended public policy and services. However, current guidance on HIA practice is not suited to the needs of policy actors working in low-resources environments. There is growing demand for guidance that will enable organisations to conduct high quality HIA with limited resources. There is a need for HIA processes that can be conducted within low resource settings:
- ensuring HIAs can be conducted quickly to align with decision-making timeframes
- ensuring HIAs can be conducted effectively with fewer resources
- ensuring HIAs can be conducted by community, local government and local health district staff without intensive training and support.
Aims
To review the requirements for conducting HIAs in low resource settings.
Design and Method
A literature review conducted by a master’s of public health student from UNSW (Tessa Wood). The literature review identified the essential indicators of successful HIA practice; existing low resource/rapid approaches and tools, factors or activities within HIAs and related approaches that could be removed, reduced or streamlined in a low resource or time poor context.
