Atlanta Beltline Brownfield Project Looks at Health Impact Assessment

SOURCE:  THE ATLANTIC CITIES, by E. Jaffe

In the musical chairs of urban planning, public health often finds itself left standing when the music stops. Often, by the time policymakers rouse support, local agencies rally funding, and land-use and transportation professionals exchange designs there's no one left to determine exactly how it will impact the health of those it's meant to serve in the first place.

That's where a "health impact assessment" comes in. An HIA, like an environmental review, evaluates the potential effects a major planning project might have on the public health of a surrounding community, and recommends certain actions needed to mitigate - or, in the case of health benefits, accelerate - those impacts.
The tool is used regularly in Europe and Canada [PDF], but it's beginning to gain some attention in the United States as well. A recent H.I.A. in northern California, for instance, pointed out that one potential barrier to public use of a walking-biking trail was safety, so it recommended proper lighting and the creation of a citizen watch group. A number of cities around the country have an H.I.A. planned, in progress, or recently completed.

Atlanta completed a two-year health impact assessment for its massive BeltLine project in 2007. The full report ran more than 200 pages [PDF], but a review of that effort, published in this month's issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, offers a compact summary of the committee's recommendations. As that paper makes clear, the study team is confident their HIA will "promote the health of local residents" far more than if the BeltLine had been built without it.

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