Health Impact Assessment Course Projects

Health Impact Assessment is a new, exciting tool to understand and insert health considerations into public decisions.  What better way to expand capacity than to teach a course?

About once a year, I teach a 3-credit course for Masters-level students at Portland State University.  It is listed as either Urban Studies (USP) or Public Health (PHE) 510 and generally draws around 10 students.  The students are mostly from the Masters of Public Health or Masters of Urban Planning programs, many dual-enrolled in both and some also crossing over into Masters of Social Work program.  This breadth of expertise and interests mirrors the diversity of the HIA field.  But it also adds to the challenge of getting everyone on the same page, trained in parameters of this field including HIA Practice Standards, and doing a project - all in less than 11 weeks!

Becaue of the quick turn around, projects undertaken in are most appropriately described as rapid, desktop HIAs.  This means that community engagement is minimal, assessment is limited to documenting baseline conditions and understanding the literature, recommendations are relatively broad, and I allow them to skip the monitoring and evaluation stage of HIA.  My teaching philosphy is to stage the project enough to be supportive, yet allow the students a ton of latitude in the direction of the project and the information contained within.  And the students are able to pack a ton of information into these documents!  

This page allows the projects to be publically available (with student permission).  By doing so, I hope to inform decisions in the short run, give examples of what is possible in HIA-courses, and help build the HIA library across the U.S.  

Enjoy! 

Spring 2015 Projects