Dear HIA colleagues
Re: WHO HELI Project.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is implementing a programme of work
entitled the 'Health and Environment Linkages (HELI) Initiative'. The
work-plan for HELI comprises a series of six inter-related 'work packages'
that seek to explore how considerations of environment and health may be
incorporated into policy decision-making. The third of these - WP3 - focuses
on ways in which existing methodologies and techniques - for example, health
impact assessment, environmental impact assessment, economic analyses -
might be adapted or used in order to enhance environmental and health
decision-making.
My colleague - Clare Davenport - and I have been asked to co-ordinate the
health impact assessment (HIA) element of WP3. Briefly, we have been asked
to undertake a review of HIA reports, supplemented with interviews with a
sample of HIA practitioners, in order to explore the extent to which HIAs
have been effective with regard to integrating health considerations into
the final decision and implementation of a policy, plan or project, and the
factors associated with such effectiveness.
In order to tackle this work, we have established a list of published HIA
reports (published in the peer-reviewed and 'grey' literature). However we
recognize that this list is likely to be incomplete and that, in particular,
it may be missing non-UK work.
The purpose of this e-mail is to ask for your assistance in compiling an
inventory of reports. We have attached a word file to the file section of
HIANET. This file (HELI project reference file) can be viewed by going to
<http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/files/HIANET/> and clicking on the link there.
The references have been compiled in alphabetical order of author. We would
be extremely grateful if you could spare 5 minutes or so to have a quick
look at the list and see whether there are HIA reports that you are aware
of, but which we have not included in the inventory.
The timetable for this work is, as usual, very tight and we would welcome
any comments on the list by Friday 5th March. We hope to have a draft
report completed by the end of April 2004 which, with the WHO's permission,
we will circulate to all members of the HIA-mail list for information and
comment.
If you have any questions about the work, please e-mail either myself or
Clare at the following addresses.
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Regards - and many thanks for any help you can give with this project.
Jonathan Mathers
University of Birmingham, UK.
|