Using Health Impact Assessments to Influence Decision-Making: Lessons Learned from Providing Technical Assistance for Projects in Different States, Sectors, and Settings

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is process with proven success in advancing a Health in All Policies (HiAP) perspective of decision-making. Because of its adaptable nature, the HIA process is suitable for a variety of project types, in a range of non-health sectors, and at multiple levels of decision-making. There are eight Minimum Elements used to distinguish HIA from other practices and methods for HiAP (Minimum Elements and Practice Standards for Health Impact Assessment, Version 3). Over the last several years, HIA practitioners at the Georgia Health Policy Center have had the opportunity to provide training, mentoring, and technical assistance (TMTA) to a variety of emerging practitioners from across the US. This presentation will use the eight Minimum Elements of HIA to frame lessons learned from eight different projects for which GHPC has provided TMTA. The HIA projects were led by the Kitsap County Public Health District in Washington State, the Prince Georges County Health Department in Maryland, the New Jersey Health Impact Collaborative, the Kentucky Environmental Foundation, Community Solutions (a non-profit working in Hartford, Connecticut), Health Resources in Action (a Public Health Institute based in Massachusetts), the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, and the Georgia Department of Public Health. The focus of the HIAs ranged from state-level labor policies to neighborhood-level sustainability planning, and each of these projects will be used to illustrate a different Minimum Element of HIA.