A Health Impact Assessment (HIA) aims to provide those preparing plans, policies or strategies with a framework to use to assess the impact of their work on the health and wellbeing of residents of Croydon. This supports the Corporate Strategy focus on prevention by ensuring Croydon Council considers the prevention of ill health in all policies.
A HIA can be described as “the estimation of the effects of a specified action on the health of a defined population”. It assesses the impact that economic, environment and social policies may potentially have on the health of residents.
Everything the council and its partners do has an impact on health and health inequalities either positively or negatively. The aim of carrying out a HIA is to maximise the positive health effects and minimise the negative health effects of new plans, policies and strategies and the tool provides a framework and a process by which partners can collaboratively and systematically review and amend their plans to improve health and reduce health inequalities.
Council staff looking to fully understand HIAs and how to initiate a rapid HIA project can use this tool.