The Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, encourages local, state, and national organizations to include health considerations in policy decisions across multiple sectors, such as housing, transportation, and education. Research shows that the conditions in which people live, learn, work, and play influence their health, so the project also works to create cross-sector partnerships that include the expertise of health care and public health systems.
Through technical and financial assistance, training, and convenings, the project helps organizations and governments identify policies, practices, and research that promote health and integrate them into their work. By engaging community stakeholders and translating research into action, the project seeks to make health a key component in decision-making and to improve the well-being of underserved populations.
The Health Impact Project’s toolkit contains resources that help communities, agencies, and other organizations take action to improve public health. The toolkit offers a collection of health impact assessments, guides, and other research to support policymakers’ efforts to consider health when making decisions across sectors, such as housing, planning, and education.
Health equity, the principle that factors such as race, income, and geography should not determine health outcomes and that all people should have the opportunity to be as healthy as possible, is one of the five values that underpin the practice of health impact assessment (HIA).
A recent health impact assessment in Oregon is helping low-income families replace substandard manufactured homes that can contribute to serious health risks. In Curry County, along Oregon’s rugged southern coast, many families live in poverty, and 33 percent of county residents live in manufactured homes that have exceeded their intended lifespan. Forty percent of the county’s manufactured homes are substandard. Yet, manufactured and substandard housing did not qualify for replacement or repair assistance provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the State of Oregon.
Research shows that the conditions in which people live, learn, work, and play influence their health. Individual health choices and access to quality care represent just part of the equation to ensure all people are as healthy as possible.
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The Health Impact Project is using a health impact assessment framework to examine the health effects of various childhood lead exposure prevention and mitigation strategies. A key part of this process is considering viewpoints from relevant sectors to ensure that recommendations include their perspectives.
