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Legal Review Concerning the Use of Health Impact Assessments in Non-Health Sectors

Keywords / Description:

The Pew Charitable Trusts worked with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Health Impact Project, and Arizona State University to develop a guidance document titled "Legal Review Concerning the Use of Health Impact Assessments in Non-Health Sectors." The document provides an overview of existing legal foundations that encourage non-health sectors to consider health in their policy and programmatic decisions. The authors looked at existing laws and regulations that could be utilized to increase the number of communities utilizing health impact assessments (HIAs). They found that among their sample, 61% of jurisdictions had a legal foundation for requiring environment and energy policy decisions to consider health, 19% of jurisdictions had the same requirements for transportation sectors , 19% of agriculture sectors, and 31% of waste disposal and recycling sectors.  While the main thrust of this document focuses on what the existing legal framework is for requiring HIAs, it can serve to inform local jurisdictions seeking to advance health in all policies because it has information on what some of the existing legal requirements are for non-health sectors to consider health.

Toolkit:

Environmental Health in All Policies (HiAP)

Keyword Area:

Health Impact Assessment (HIA), Health Policy, Policies

Jurisdiction:

Institutional Author:

PEW

Submitted:

11/27/2012

Modified:

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By David Fukuzawa