Skip Navigation

Publication Detail

Title: Health impact assessment of urban waterway decisions.

Authors: Korfmacher, Katrina Smith; Aviles, Katia; Cummings, B J; Daniell, William; Erdmann, Jared; Garrison, Valerie

Published In Int J Environ Res Public Health, (2014 Dec 25)

Abstract: Health impact assessments (HIA) promote the consideration of health in a wide range of public decisions. Although each HIA is different, common pathways, evidence bases, and strategies for community engagement tend to emerge in certain sectors, such as urban redevelopment, natural resource extraction, or transportation planning. To date, a limited number of HIAs have been conducted on decisions affecting water resources and waterfronts. This review presents four recent HIAs of water-related decisions in the United States and Puerto Rico. Although the four cases are topically and geographically diverse, several common themes emerged from the consideration of health in water-related decisions. Water resource decisions are characterized by multiple competing uses, inter-institutional and inter-jurisdictional complexity, scientific uncertainty, long time scales for environmental change, diverse cultural and historical human values, and tradeoffs between private use and public access. These four case studies reveal challenges and opportunities of examining waterfront decisions through a "health lens". This review analyzes these cases, common themes, and lessons learned for the future practice of HIA in the waterfront zone and beyond.

PubMed ID: 25547399 Exiting the NIEHS site

MeSH Terms: Community Health Planning/methods*; Environment; Environmental Policy*; Health Impact Assessment/methods*; Health Policy; Humans; Public Health; Puerto Rico; Rivers; United States; Water Supply*

Back
to Top