In 07, the developers of a senior-housing project planned in Oakland, California, decided to move the entrance 'adjacent to a busy road in a quiet Court. The change would make it safer for residents as they walked to and from home. The idea, from a group based in Oakland called Human Impact Partners, sent a small but important health problem that might otherwise have been ignored.
A report released yesterday by the National Research Council National Academies of Canada (NRC) provides a ringing endorsement of these efforts, called an assessment of the health impact (EIS). The report not only provides guidelines for conducting these analyzes, but also argues for their value on both public and private construction projects, from urban farmers markets to federal highways.
"I think there is a real need to incorporate impact assessments on health in future decisions of multiple layers of our society, starting with the US government on the bottom "said Richard Jackson of the University of California, Los Angeles, who chaired the NRC Committee on the evaluation of the impact on health. The first report in the US was born from a 1999 proposal to boost the minimum paid salaried workers employed by contractors hired by the city of San Francisco. In 06, state lawmakers Washington has authorized the State Council of Health to conduct similar reports to EIS, although the funding of these reports has since been cut, said Gordon MacCracken, spokesman for advice.
The panel's report recommends that each HIA should start with a basic health assessment in a given community. In the case of the proposed Oakland housing, it could mean the collection of data on accidents involving pedestrians elderly. Planners would then estimate, through community surveys and epidemiological data, the way the project is likely to affect this basis.
Lili Farhang, associate director of Human Impact Partners, said she supports efforts to bring EIS in the projector. But she recognizes that EIS may seem "faddish" outside. "People just want to know," How do you do? and "How do you do well? "She said.
The biggest EIS face obstacle may be the status quo, although the report notes that federal laws may already meet them. The National Environmental Policy Act of the United States (NEPA) requires that federal agencies to conduct environmental impact assessments on threats or boons to "the quality of the human environment" as well as the natural environment. This requirement is largely forgotten, said committee member of Aaron Wernham, director of the project impact on health, a joint venture of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helped pay for the study. He said the problem is often that particular mission agencies lack expertise to explore the health consequences of their actions. "health must be at the table," says Wernham.
However, some experts expressed reservations about rolling EIS in the process NEPA. "the people fear that the impact assessments on health do not become too bureaucratic and not another box that is checked in a process, "says Wernham.
Howard Frumkin, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, Seattle, sees the NEPA process as an "appropriate framework" for some EIS. In 07, Wernham and his colleagues did just that when they examined the health consequences of leasing land in the North Slope of Alaska developers of oil and gas. This HIA, in collaboration with other environmental assessments under NEPA, made several proposals on factors ranging from pollution monitoring of the management of herds of caribou for subsistence populations, many of which were then accepted by the Bureau of Land Management US. "I do not think anyone is in serious disagreement with the idea that we should make the policies as beneficial to health as possible," Frumkin said.
Economic realities, however, can prevent EIS to spread throughout the federal government. An organization like the Department of the US Forest would probably need a partnership with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who co-sponsored the NRC report, said Frumkin. But CDC was "very hard hit," financially, said Frumkin, who previously ran a center at CDC.
CDC spends money to train local governments in the EIS drivers, said Federico Feldstein, a spokesman for the agency. "the role of CDC in the NEPA process is currently under consideration," adds Feldstein. "as part of this process, CDC leadership opportunities are explored."
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