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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Health Impact Assessment – Making Whole-of-Government Decision Making Possible

On March 9, 2011, we held our fourth webinar, Health Impact Assessment - Making Whole-of-Government Decision Making Possible.
It drew on our December, 2011 report, Stepping It Up: Moving the Focus from Health Care in Canada to a Healthier Canada. 
For this webinar, we invited three guest panelists: Louise St. Pierre from the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy in Montreal; Lyne Jobin from the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Quebec City; and Olanna White from Toronto Public Health.We'd like to thank the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy for their valuable assistance in organizing this event.
If you missed the webinar, you can download a playback link by clicking HERE. You can download the complete PowerPoint presentations including references and useful information links HERE. Finally, below are the questions we didn't have time for...
  1. If negative health impacts are realized in the future that may be attributable to the project or policy, does the burden of proof remain with the consulted community...or is the coordinator of the HIA accountable to address these issues? Has the tool ever been evaluated for expected outcomes for any project or policy­
  2. Could Olanna please provide some examples of concept of 'equity-based' HIA?
  3. Besides Quebec and Toronto - are other provinces or territories using HIA and if so - where?­
  4. Where are the best sources of scientific evidence re health impacts on social determinants of health?­
  5. Olanna, as a follow up to the question on how City of Toronto is using HIA, do you plan to propose to the City that it use HIA as part of process when reports go forward to City Council similar to Equity Lens initiative?
  6. How can community health boards use the HIA tool to improve the health of the community­?
You may have your own questions, answers or comments about either the report or what you heard in our webinar. Please post them in the comments section below.
 





3 comments:

  1. Thanks for an interesting webinar. This is a useful document for understanding HIA and Inequities
    http://www.ncchpp.ca/docs/HIA_Inequities_EN_March2010.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  2. Please find below the answers to the questions that were addressed to me.

    Could Olanna please provide some examples of concept of 'equity-based' HIA?

    Page 8 of our HIA Framework provides some examples of the concept of equity-based HIA.

    Available at: http://www.toronto.ca/health/hphe/pdf/draft_hia_framework.pdf

    Olanna, as a follow up to the question on how City of Toronto is using HIA, do you plan to propose to the City that it use HIA as part of process when reports go forward to City Council similar to Equity Lens initiative?

    Toronto Public Health has just recently completed the evaluation of our HIA pilot. We are still in the very early stages and we have yet to decide how the HIA framework will look in the end and how we will move forward with this initiative.

    Thanks,
    Olanna

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  3. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a means of assessing the health impacts of policies, plans and projects in diverse economic sectors using quantitative, qualitative and participatory techniques.

    HIA helps decision-makers make choices about alternatives and improvements to prevent disease/injury and to actively promote health. WHO supports tools and initiatives in HIA to dynamically improve health and well-being across sectors.

    ReplyDelete