Health Impact Assessment -> Publications

Global priorities in HIA research: a new agenda for the next decade

Haigh F, Green L, Hirono K, Mekel OCL, Douglas M.
BMC Public Health. 2025 Feb 26;25(1):791. doi: 10.1186/s12889-025-21983-2.

SUMMARY: Based on a global survey and stakeholder workshops gathering insights from approximately 280 participants it provides an overview of research priorities and gaps for us all to work on in the field. We identified four research priorities to shape the future of HIA practice:

1. Institutionalisation- Sustaining HIA in varying contexts and levels
2. Influence- Identifying strategies to effectively influence decision making
3. Equity and Participation- Analysing the role of equity, justice and participation
4. Methodology- Improving methods to understand relationships between actions and outcomes

Authors thank to all participants who contributed to this research. We welcome your comments and look forward to collaborating to advance this research agenda

Exploring the implementation of health impact assessment in Portuguese Public Health System

da Costa, L M. G., Costa, A, Dias Ferreira, A C, Martin-Olmedo, P, & Green, L.  
Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal. 2025, 1–13.
doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2025.2459980.

SUMMARY: Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a proactive, evidence-based approach that integrates health considerations into decision-making across sectors to prevent adverse effects and promote health equity. While global interest in HIA is growing, its implementation varies by country. In Portugal, despite existing legal frameworks and some previous capacity-building efforts, HIA is not fully institutionalized, and its practice within the Public Health System (PHS) remains largely undocumented. To address this, we conducted an online survey targeting regional and local PHS professionals to assess their awareness, experience, and perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to effective HIA implementation. The results obtained from 187 valid answers gathered from the survey revealed a strikingly low level of HIA awareness and practice within the Portuguese PHS, underscoring the urgent need for improved training and capacity building. Furthermore, the survey identified strong professional interest in HIA initiatives, suggesting significant potential for developing HIA specialized educational programs. Overall, the findings call for stronger political leadership at the governmental level to establish HIA as a key tool for achieving sustainable development goals. Finally, the study emphasizes the potential for international collaboration, particularly with Portuguese-speaking countries, to adapt these insights to their own contexts.

Development of a Health Impact Assessment Implementation Model: Enhancing Intersectoral Approaches in Tackling Health Inequalities- A Mixed Methods Study Protocol 

O'MULLANE, M., KENNY, T., NASH, K., MCHUGH, S., KAVANAGH, P., SMITH, K. & ARCHIBONG, U.
[version 3; peer review: 2 approved]. HRB Open Research. 2025, 7.
https://doi.org/10.12688/hrbopenres.13873.3

SUMMARY: Public health research presents compelling evidence that health is socially determined. To address structural inequalities and inequities in health, public policies require intersectoral development and implementation. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is an established approach for analysing potentially detrimental health impacts of policies, programmes, and projects, as well as potentially positive impacts and opportunities. National public health policy, Healthy Ireland (2013–2025), endorses an intersectoral whole-of-system approach to ensure that health is a central part of all relevant policy areas. HIA is endorsed in this policy as one way to drive this agenda. Synergising with this policy commitment for HIA, the all-island Institute of Public Health Ireland produced revised HIA guidance in 2021. Two HIAs will be carried out as part of this project, including one at a local policy level, addressing the Cork City Development Plan (2022–2028), and the second HIA at a national policy level, addressing the Irish Government’s Climate Action Plan (2024). The updated HIA guidance will be used in the conduct of these HIAs. This research project involves a co-creation of a Health Impact Assessment Implementation Model by employing an action research approach with implementation science frameworks to the conduct of the two HIAs. Therefore, the process of doing the HIAs will form the basis for the research study. In order to enhance meaningful community involvement in HIA in Ireland, the project will co-create a Community Engagement Toolkit for HIA. This Model will strengthen researcher, policy actor, practitioner, community, and voluntary sector capacity to collaboratively develop and implement intersectoral and equitable policy responses to major population health issues.

Quantification of health impacts in EU chemical policy evaluations

Joint Research Centre, Chinchio, E., Martin-Olmedo, P., Di Novi, C., Franco, A., Olvedy, M., Worth, A. and Bopp, S.,
Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2025. Available at:
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC140544/JRC140544_01.pdf

SUMMARY: Evaluating the effectiveness of EU legislation requires the identification of significant impacts across economic, environmental, and social dimensions. Quantifying health impacts, typically through environmental burden of disease indicators, is crucial. However, assessing health impacts of chemicals, and thus the benefits of chemicals legislation in avoiding such impacts, poses significant challenges due to complex, multi-factorial causes of disease and long-term, low-concentration exposures. This study examines how health impacts have been quantified in studies supporting recent evaluations and impact assessments of the EU chemicals policy, focusing on the use of epidemiological evidence. The report highlights methodological strengths and weaknesses, key aspects for quality and reporting, and provides recommendations for gathering, reporting, and evaluating epidemiological evidence. Greater standardisation and increased transparency in these analyses will enhance quality and efficiency of these evaluations for better informed policy-making at the EU level.

Human health: Ensuring a high level of protection. A reference paper on addressing Human Health in Environmental Impact Assessment

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is currently a mandatory legal procedure in all EU countries, applied to a wide range of public and private projects prior their implementation. Directive 2014/52 /EU amended the EIA Directive (Directive 2011/92 /EU), replacing under the scope of covered environmental factors (Article 3), “human being” by “population and human health”. From a public health perspective, this change brings hope for a better evaluation of health issues within the EIA procedure. However, the amended Directive does not provide a definition for population and human health nor an indication of methods for assessing the potential significant health impacts.

European Public Health Association (EUPHA) together with the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) has prepared a reference document on ways in which human health can be addressed within the EIA process as set out by the amended EIA Directive. The aim is to establish basic definitions and common principles, to set out ways in which the health sector can contribute to this regulatory requirement and to provide a document that complements existing national and regional guidance on health in EIA.

Human health: Ensuring a high level of protection. A reference paper on addressing human health in Environmental Impact Assessment as per EU Directive 2011/92/EU Amended by 2014/52/EU can be found here. 

The summary document can be found here. 
The Spanish translation can be found here.

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