INTEGRATING HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT INTO ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Quality of life in general is determined by the health of the population resulting from a healthy environment. The objective of Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is to maximize health benefits and minimize negative impacts on health. According to International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA), HIA is formally defined as a combination of procedures, methods and tools that systematically judges the potential, and sometimes unintended, effects of a proposed project, plan, or policy on the health of a population and the distribution of those effects within the population. HIA identifies appropriate actions to manage those effects. Although existing laws and guidance support the inclusion of a comprehensive health analysis in Environmental Impact Assessment, current Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) practice usually does not link proposed actions and alternatives to health outcomes. A complete analysis of health effects would consider all potentially significant direct, indirect and cumulative health impacts associated with the proposed action and alternatives. The term Integrated Impact Assessment has been used to describe many different procedures but essentially any process which attempts to cover more than one type of impact assessment in a single process can be called an integrated impact assessment. Most commonly Integrated Impact Assessments combine an EIA and a HIA. The important issue is that consequences for health of policies and decisions should be properly considered. Many have concluded that Integrated Impact Assessment is the best way of ensuring that health issues are considered during development of policies, programmes and projects.