Assessing the Impact on Health – Methodology and Principles

Abstract

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a type of methodology used in developed societies to help decision-makers outside of the health sector to assess potential health effects of proposed projects and programs. HIA is defined as a combination of procedures, methods and tools used to evaluate a policy, program or project, together with their potential effects on the health of the population, as well as the distribution of such effects within the population. In order to promote the highest possible level of population health, international agreement was reached on four key principles that constitute HIA. These principles are: democracy principle, with emphasis on the rights of citizens to participate in a transparent process of designing policies that affect their own lives; justice principle, in the distribution of influence and power within the population; sustainable development, which takes into account all of the effects on health; and, finally, the ethical use of evidence employed in the development of HIA. Ethical principles in the development of HIA help guide program managers and implementers in decision-making. HIA seeks to use dialogue in order to find solutions to issues between individuals and groups with differing, and often conflicting, interests, using the ethical principles, the main purpose of which is to protect the interests of the community.