Use of Health Impact Assessments in the Prevention of War

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a systematic process to determine the potential effects of a proposed policy, plan, program, or project on the health of a population and the distribution of those effects within the population. HIA uses six steps and a set of five guiding principles – democracy, equity, ethical use of evidence, sustainable development, and a comprehensive view of health – to assess possible health effects and ways to monitor and manage those effects. Policy HIA is a growing field with the potential to illuminate the myriad health effects of a specific policy decision, including the costs of anticipated or imminent plans for war. t prepared by the British group, Medact, which predicted the costs of the impending 2003 invasion of Iraq to both lives and treasury, “Collateral Damage: the health and environmental costs of war on Iraq – 2002.” http://www.medact.org/article_health.php?articleID=620