Major update of the International Best Practice Principles for health impact assessment

Cover of the International Best Practice Principles: Health Impact Assessment document

The International Association for Impact Assessment has published revised International Bets Practice Principles: Health Impact Assessment.

This influential guide has been updated for the first time in fifteen years to reflect the evolution of health impact assessment practice. Mirko Winkler led the revision and the team included Francesca Viliani, Astrid Knoblauch, Ben Cave, Mark Divall, Geetha Ramesh, Peter Furu and I .

Key Citations

The Principles are accompanied by an updated IAIA Key Citations document. This sets out important health impact assessment milestone publications, guidance documents and journal articles .

The new guide complements the findings of the international survey on Current Global Health Impact Assessment Practice that was published last year .

References

Winkler, M., Viliani, F., Knoblauch, A., Cave, B., Divall, M., Ramesh, G., Harris-Roxas, B., & Furu, P. (2021). International Best Practice Principles: Health Impact Assessment (2nd edition) (Special Publication Series). International Association for Impact Assessment.
Winkler, M., Viliani, F., Cave, B., Divall, M., Knoblauch, A., Harris-Roxas, B., Ramesh, G., & Furu, P. (2021). Key Citations: Health Impact Assessment (Key Citations Series). International Association for Impact Assessment.
Winkler, M. S., Furu, P., Viliani, F., Cave, B., Divall, M., Ramesh, G., Harris-Roxas, B., & Knoblauch, A. M. (2020). Current Global Health Impact Assessment Practice. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(9), 2988. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17092988

A guide to monitoring and evaluating policy influence

A guide to monitoring and evaluating policy influence

A useful and, more importantly, comprehensible guide to aligning types evaluation activities with the anticipated mechanisms of policy influence:

  • evidence and advice
  • public campaigns and advocacy
  • lobbying and negotiation.

There’s also some recognition of the messiness of attribution in the context of policy change, and that even policy actors themselves rarely fully appreciate the forces that determine and shape policy implementation.

This schema is worth revisiting in the context of the typology of HIA, i.e. mandated, decision support, advocacy, and community empowerment, because it may provide an alternate lens for understanding why HIAs gain traction or not.