Health Impact Assessment

3.0 credits · Graduate

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.