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How Can Health Impact Assessments Lead to Better Policy Decisions?
Updated March 2013
Many of the biggest policy decisions that impact our well-being are made outside of the health and healthcare sectors. For example, local zoning and transportation planning, state budget decisions, and federal agriculture and energy policies can all impact our health. HIAs help policy-makers consider how such decisions will affect health and offer guidance for improving health and minimizing health-related risks, and costs.
- Health impact assessments (HIAs) allow policy-makers to consider how proposed policies that may seem unrelated to health—the development of a new transit system, for example—would affect health, and could be used to improve it.
- HIAs can help marshal community support for a project, facilitate collaboration across sectors, and offer benefits for businesses.
- More than 200 HIAs that are focused on policies at all levels of government have been completed or are in progress across the country.
Health Policy Snapshot
Two-page briefs providing insight and analysis on key issues affecting health and health care in the United States.
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