Promoting equity through the practice of health impact assessment

Addressing health inequities requires a more fair and just distribution of the social, economic, environmental, and political opportunities that yield good health outcomes. This requires ensuring that vulnerable populations play active and leading roles in public decision making that impacts their lives, as well as targeting resources to those communities that have the poorest health outcomes. While many health practitioners and advocates seek to achieve health equity, the tools they have at their disposal to do so are limited. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is an important tool for health equity. It helps communities, public officials, advocates and researchers to understand the health implications of proposed policies, plans, or projects. Equity is a core value of HIA and practitioners can use HIA to advance equity in decision–making processes. Yet, as HIA becomes more commonly used, there is a risk that the focus on equity will diminish without explicit attention, care, and guidance regarding its role in HIA practice. This presentation will be part of a panel of three other speakers focused on sharing nine principles for the inclusion of equity in HIA and specific strategies for implementing each principle. Each speaker will focus on three different principles and share how the principle was implemented in a specific case study. This presentation will share case studies from HIAs in the Twin Cities on equitable transit-oriented development and regional sustainability planning in rural California. The other presentations will focus on separate principles and hone in on case studies in several regions.