Health Impact Assessment for Public Health Projects Training Course

Course overview

Public health projects can create benefits while also changing access to services, housing conditions, transport patterns, employment, safety, social cohesion and exposure to environmental hazards. Without a structured Health Impact Assessment (HIA), teams may identify these effects too late, rely on weak assumptions, or overlook how impacts differ across population groups. This course equips practitioners to assess likely health consequences before decisions are fixed, so project sponsors can strengthen design, justify mitigation measures and document defensible recommendations.

Participants work through the full HIA process: screening, scoping, stakeholder engagement, baseline profiling, evidence review, impact analysis, equity assessment, recommendation development, reporting and monitoring. They learn to define affected populations, build causal pathways, select indicators, use mixed quantitative and qualitative evidence, rate the likelihood and significance of impacts, and distinguish project-attributable effects from wider contextual trends. The course also addresses proportionate HIA design, rapid versus comprehensive assessment, governance arrangements and integration with environmental and social impact assessment processes.

Teaching combines instructor-led method demonstrations with a running public health project case involving a proposed community infrastructure intervention. Participants use practical templates to prepare a screening decision, scoping matrix, stakeholder map, health profile, impact register, recommendation schedule and monitoring plan. By the end of the week, each participant leaves with a structured HIA project pack that can be adapted for a live programme, policy, regeneration scheme, service redesign or infrastructure proposal.

The course is designed for public health, health and social care, local government, planning, environmental, community development and programme-management professionals who already contribute to project decisions and need a repeatable method for assessing health effects and health inequalities.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Conduct an HIA screening assessment using defined decision criteria and a documented screening rationale
• Develop a proportionate HIA scope covering populations, determinants, boundaries, methods, governance and timescales
• Construct causal pathway diagrams linking project activities to health determinants, outcomes and population groups
• Compile a baseline community health profile using demographic, deprivation, service-use and health-outcome indicators
• Appraise quantitative, qualitative and community evidence using an evidence-strength framework
• Assess the magnitude, likelihood, duration, distribution and equity implications of predicted health impacts
• Produce prioritised mitigation and enhancement recommendations with accountable owners and delivery measures
• Design an HIA monitoring and evaluation plan with indicators, data sources, review points and reporting arrangements

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Public Health Practitioners — who need to assess health and inequality implications of policies, programmes and projects
• Health Improvement Managers — who must turn population-health evidence into actionable project recommendations
• Local Authority Policy Officers — who advise decision-makers on the health consequences of regeneration and service proposals
• Planning and Regeneration Officers — who need to address health determinants within development and infrastructure decisions
• Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Specialists — who need to integrate HIA evidence and equity analysis into wider assessments
• Programme and Project Managers — who need a practical process for identifying, mitigating and monitoring health-related project risks

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience of public health projects, service planning, policy development, community programmes, planning, environmental assessment or related delivery work. The course assumes familiarity with basic public health concepts such as population health, health inequalities, social determinants of health and routine data indicators. Participants should be comfortable reading project briefs, working with tables and interpreting simple charts in Microsoft Excel. No prior HIA qualification, statistical modelling expertise, ArcGIS experience or specialist epidemiology training is required. Participants do not need to bring an approved live project, although one will make the final application planning more useful.

Training methodology

The five days alternate concise instructor-led briefings with structured HIA workshops. Participants apply each stage to a running case, moving from a project brief through screening, scoping, population profiling, evidence review, impact prediction and recommendation design. Small groups compare evidence sources, test causal pathways and calibrate impact ratings against an assessment rubric. Facilitated peer review is used to strengthen assumptions and recommendation wording. The final day includes an individual application-planning session in which participants adapt the course templates to a project or decision process in their own organisation.

Course outline

Day 1: HIA foundations, purpose and screening

• Health Impact Assessment principles and the Gothenburg Consensus definition
• Determinants of health and pathways from project decisions to outcomes
• Health equity, vulnerable populations and distributional effects
• HIA types: rapid, intermediate and comprehensive assessment
• HIA governance, independence, proportionality and decision timing
• Screening criteria, exclusion decisions and screening documentation
• Positioning HIA alongside Environmental Impact Assessment and Equality Impact Assessment

Workshop: Participants complete a screening assessment for a proposed community infrastructure project and produce a written proceed, modify or do-not-proceed decision rationale.

Day 2: Scoping, stakeholders and baseline health profiles

• Defining project boundaries, alternatives and assessment assumptions
• Scoping matrices for determinants, populations, outcomes and evidence needs
• Stakeholder mapping using influence, interest and lived-experience criteria
• Community engagement methods for HIA interviews, workshops and surveys
• Geographic and demographic population profiling
• Selecting baseline indicators for morbidity, mortality, deprivation and service access
• Data sources including routine statistics, local intelligence and service data

Workshop: Participants produce a scoped HIA matrix, stakeholder engagement plan and baseline indicator list for the case population.

Day 3: Evidence review and impact prediction

• Causal pathway diagrams and logic models for health effects
• Evidence review questions and search strategies for HIA
• Appraising epidemiological evidence, local data and qualitative findings
• Triangulating community insight with routine population datasets
• Predicting direct, indirect, cumulative and unintended impacts
• Impact rating dimensions: likelihood, magnitude, duration and reversibility
• Documenting uncertainty, assumptions and evidence gaps

Workshop: Participants build causal pathways and an evidence-informed impact register that records predicted positive and negative effects.

Day 4: Equity analysis and actionable recommendations

• Distributional impact analysis across protected and disadvantaged groups
• Assessing differential exposure, sensitivity and capacity to benefit
• Prioritisation matrices for significant health impacts
• Mitigation hierarchy: avoid, minimise, restore and compensate
• Designing health enhancement measures within project constraints
• Writing specific recommendations with owners, deadlines and success measures
• Recommendation traceability from evidence to decision

Workshop: Participants rate impacts by significance and equity effect, then produce a prioritised mitigation and enhancement recommendation schedule.

Day 5: Reporting, monitoring and organisational application

• HIA report structure, executive summaries and technical appendices
• Communicating findings to sponsors, communities and governance boards
• Monitoring indicators, baselines, targets and data-collection responsibilities
• Process, impact and outcome evaluation for HIA follow-through
• Review points linked to project gateways and design changes
• Quality assurance against IAIA Best Practice Principles
• Embedding HIA in organisational policy, procurement and programme governance

Workshop: Participants assemble and peer-review an HIA project pack comprising a summary report, impact register, recommendation schedule and monitoring plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, ArcGIS Pro, IAIA Best Practice Principles for Health Impact Assessment, Gothenburg Consensus Paper

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions