Improving the Use of Evidence in Health Impact Assessment/ Ameliorer L'utilisation Des Elements D'appreciation Dans L'evaluation De L'impact sanitaire/Mejorar El USO De la Evidencia En la Evaluacion del Impacto Sanitario
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Introduction The of an individual is influenced by a range of factors amenable to public policy on, for example, housing, education transport. Consequently, multidisciplinary outside jurisdiction of services or ministries have potential to influence health. (1) While policy-makers increasingly focus on obtaining better information, they often receive little support with decision-making. Health impact assessment (HIA) has been proposed as one mechanism that can support decisionmaking; (2) it focuses primarily on policy outside medical sector on intersectoral actions) Recently, World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health recommended that impact of all on inequality should be assessed. (1) In practice, HIA also includes an assessment of impact on inequality. (4) Consideration of impact of has been encouraged across world. Major centres for HIA include Australia, (5) Thailand (6) several countries in Europe. (7-9) The Finnish government made HIA health for all policies central strands of its 2006 presidency of European Union. (10) In addition, HIA is being introduced in United States of America. (11) The comparatively high rates of morbidity mortality experienced in middle- low-income countries can only partly be addressed by improving health-care provision, so need for HIA is even greater in these countries than in developed world. Various definitions of HIA have been proposed over time. (12) Ratner et al. (1997) defined HIA as any combination of procedures or methods by which a proposed policy or program may be judged as to effect(s) it may have on of a population. (13) In 1999, WHO Regional Office for Europe added and distribution of those effects within (4) to include consideration of inequalities; this concept is central to Jakarta declaration. (14) Further, HIA has also been described as the use of best available to assess likely effect of a specific policy in a specific situation, (15,16) leading to comparisons with evidence-based medicine. Current HIA methodology has been criticized for a lack of rigour in collecting analysing evidence. (17-19) Thus, despite policy drive to encourage its use, HIA will be discredited if it fails to be both rigorous well founded. (20) It is generally agreed that three types of knowledge are combined in HIA: that provided by stakeholders based on their experience; local data; publicly available evidence, including past HIAs (Fig. 1). It is important that better frameworks are developed for integrating different types of research so that they can be used in decision-making (21) and, consequently, so that HIAs can make better use of publicly available evidence, such as scientific assessments, research studies published in peer-reviewed journals previous HIAs. For simplicity, term evidence is used throughout this paper to cover all publicly available evidence. Several specific difficulties are encountered when reviewing for use in HIA. (22) These include: tight timescales; a diverse base (created, in part, by diversity of impacts complex causal pathways); wide range of stakeholders; need to make recommendations to decision-makers; need to consider reversibility of adverse factors that damage have an unequal impact on different population subgroups; need to review relevant qualitative as well as statistical evidence. (21,22) Another important problem is a lack of skills training, particularly in searching literature, undertaking critical appraisals synthesizing findings. In medium- low-income countries, where specific expertise is likely to be scarce, there is a particular need for guidance on how to conduct high-quality HIA. …
Authors: Jennifer S. Mindell, Jane Biddulph, Lorraine C. Taylor, Karen Lock, Annette Boaz, Michael Joffe, Sarah Curtis
Language: French
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2616254191