Health Impact Assessment

Catalog description

Public health and community leaders seek to identify policy or program options that can address community health needs or gaps. More and more, the role of--and human interactions with--built and natural environments are considered when seeking innovations to improve human and ecosystem health. Health impact assessments can be a useful tool, "a means of assessing the health impacts of policies, plans and projects in diverse economic sectors using quantitative, qualitative and participatory techniques" {World Health Organization). The course introduces students to the 4+2 steps that are used to consider and conduct a health impact assessment, and students work to consider fit and feasibility of this approach, develop organizational capacity to implement the approach, and practice implementation with a real world/real-world-like project.