Health Impact Assessment: Concepts and Guidelines for the Americas

Abstract

Health, both individual and collective, always has been essential for both human and social development; this is why the debate on the best way to protect and care for it is so broad, and why there are several approaches proposed on how to do so. Health impact assessment (HIA) is one of these approaches, where the objective is to improve and safeguard individual health by offering a practical, evidence-based tool that enables governments to improve their planning processes. This document invites not only considering but also adopting health impact assessment as a practice in the Region. Each country has its own specific context, which means each should consider the most appropriate mechanism for the application. Nevertheless, what is most important is to increase its application to create lessons learned and improve this tool that has a lot to offer the Region.