Health Impact Assessment (HIA): Guides & Tools

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The National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP) seeks to support the efforts of the Canadian public health community and its partners in promoting healthy public policy through more informed strategies. Among other things, the Centre focuses on Health Impact Assessment (HIA), a tool that helps shed light on decision making related to the development of policies, programs or projects that could have effects on the population’s overall health.

There are many HIA guides and tools. The NCCHPP identified them from the main Internet sites on the subject during the spring of 2008. The instruments are divided into three groups corresponding to the three following sections:

general guides and orientation documents;
applied guides and tools (particular activity sectors or themes);
general tools.

Each guide and tool has specific characteristics. It is therefore up to users, whether they are decision makers, policy analysts, public health actors, or community groups interested in HIA, to choose which ones best suit their needs.