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    The effectiveness of health impact assessment in influencing decision-making in Australia and New Zealand 2005-2009

    194161_99654_Effectiveness_of_Health_Impact_Assessment_in_Influencing_Decision-Making_in_Australia_and.pdf (319.7Kb)
    Access Status
    Open access
    Authors
    Haigh, F.
    Baum, F.
    Dannenberg, A.
    Harris, M.
    Harris-Roxas, B.
    Keleher, H.
    Kemp, L.
    Morgan, R.
    Chok, H.
    Spickett, Jeffery
    Harris, E.
    Date
    2013
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Haigh, Fiona and Baum, Fran and Dannenberg, Andrew L. and Harris, Mark F. and Harris-Roxas, Ben and Keleher, Helen and Kemp, Lynn and Morgan, Richard and Chok, Harrison N.G. and Spickett, Jeffery and Harris, Elizabeth. 2013. The effectiveness of health impact assessment in influencing decision-making in Australia and New Zealand 2005-2009. BMC Public Health. 13 (1): pp. 1-9.
    Source Title
    BMC Public Health
    DOI
    10.1186/1471-2458-13-1188
    ISSN
    1471-2458
    Remarks

    © 2013 Haigh et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/38724
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    Background: Health Impact Assessment (HIA) involves assessing how proposals may alter the determinants of health prior to implementation and recommends changes to enhance positive and mitigate negative impacts. HIAs growing use needs to be supported by a strong evidence base, both to validate the value of its application and to make its application more robust. We have carried out the first systematic empirical study of the influence of HIA on decision-making and implementation of proposals in Australia and New Zealand. This paper focuses on identifying whether and how HIAs changed decision-making and implementation and impacts that participants report following involvement in HIAs. Methods: We used a two-step process first surveying 55 HIAs followed by 11 in-depth case studies. Data gathering methods included questionnaires with follow-up interview, semi-structured interviews and document collation. We carried out deductive and inductive qualitative content analyses of interview transcripts and documents as well as simple descriptive statistics. Results: We found that most HIAs are effective in some way. HIAs are often directly effective in changing, influencing, broadening areas considered and in some cases having immediate impact on decisions. Even when HIAs are reported to have no direct effect on a decision they are often still effective in influencing decision-making processes and the stakeholders involved in them. HIA participants identify changes in relationships, improved understanding of the determinants of health and positive working relationships as major and sustainable impacts of their involvement.Conclusions: This study clearly demonstrates direct and indirect effectiveness of HIA influencing decision making in Australia and New Zealand. We recommend that public health leaders and policy makers should be confident in promoting the use of HIA and investing in building capacity to undertake high quality HIAs. New findings about the value HIA stakeholders put on indirect impacts such as learning and relationship building suggest HIA has a role both as a technical tool that makes predictions of potential impacts of a policy, program or project and as a mechanism for developing relationships with and influencing other sectors. Accordingly when evaluating the effectiveness of HIAs we need to look beyond the direct impacts on decisions.

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