Opportunities and challenges for health impact assessment within the scope of environmental impact assessment

Whether the emerging field of health impact assessment (HIA) should or should not be incorporated into existing environmental impact assessment (EIA) as mandated by federal and state law is the matter of considerable debate. While protecting human health impacts is clearly a goal of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that established formal environmental impact assessment in the U.S., there are a number of legal, administrative and practical challenges to expanding the scope of human health impacts examined in NEPA-mandated assessments. From the perspective of public health advocates, there are also questions about whether incorporation into existing EIA processes is the most effective way to accomplish the goals of HIA.

In this session we will present findings from a survey of environmental impact assessment reviewers and analysts about perceived opportunities for and challenges to bringing a greater consideration of health impacts into EIA. We will discuss current developments in HIA and EIA in the U.S. that warrant an evolving consideration of HIA in EIA. And, we will examine lessons learned from other countries where HIA has been incorporated into EIA.