Health Impact Assessment in Regional Public Policy:

The health and well-being that communities experience are primarily determined by a range of economic, environmental and social factors. While health care services do have an important contribution to make, securing long-term health improvement demands active engagement from other agencies and sectors.

The White Paper Choosing Health has stated that health is to be incorporated as an explicit element of the regulatory impact assessment that is undertaken of all national public policies. This resource seeks to build on this welcome development, and outlines the potential contribution that impact assessment can make to improving regional public policy. It briefly describes a number of impact assessment methods, and addresses some of the challenges these approaches might present in practice.

It is intended as an introduction to impact assessment for those involved in policy development and decision-making in the statutory and non-statutory sectors, particularly those whose primary roles or organisations are not health-related. Furthermore, while it has been prepared with specific regard to regional policy development it is not targeted at a solely regional audience - it should be of assistance to those working to effect more local change too. Fundamentally, the use of impact assessment methods should facilitate evidence-based decision-making at policy level, and ultimately support the implementation of more evidence-based action in practice. However, they are only part of the health improvement process, and in themselves do not guarantee real change. In order to be of substantive value, they need to be backed up by a genuine commitment and willingness to accept their findings and, critically, change policy accordingly.

Impact assessment in public policy FINAL.pdf
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