Networks and information exchange among HIA people Salim Vohra Centre for Health Impact Assessment, Institute of Occupational Medicine HIA Gateway Launch Conference 25 th June 2008

Why networks and why information exchange? Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? T. S. Eliot The Rock (1934) pt.1

Why networks and why information exchange?  Personal development / learning  Developing the field  More fun/ interesting  Making HIA easier  Reducing effort and duplication more skilled, more numbers more coherence, better methodologies meeting new people, picking up new ideas and insights and challenging established practice providing a consensus on practical issues – how to synthesising knowledge and experience

We’re doing pretty well….   3 networks – UK & Ireland, Asia Pacific and USA  Annual International HIA and Asia Pacific HIA conferences  HIA Gateway – repository, forum, network page  HIA blog  HIA wiki  Other websites around the world  ‘HIA Centres’

But there is still much to do…   A small number of active people and a large passive base  Not capturing everything that’s happening in HIA in the UK (or elsewhere)  Helping newcomers feel at home – having a HIA community induction process  Learning sets and dialogue forums for experienced practitioners  HIA as a career pathway  Keeping information up to date There's also a big gap between introductory HIA/the level of familiarity one gets from doing one or two HIAs and the level required to be lead practitioners on major project HIAs or to be able to be a HIA specialist doing 3-5 HIAs at simultaneously - or perhaps not? Do we need fellowships and opportunities to for focused, specialised training to get over the HIA mid-specialty hump? Ben Harris-Roxas I've been told by some people that the fact that comments are publicly viewable is one of the reasons they refrain from posting comments on the HIA Blog (healthimpac tassessment. blogspot.co m). Ben Harris- Roxas

Nexuses of HIA

The other point to make is that even though there is some mention of HIA in French language publications and some Francophone capacity (Switzeland, Quebecois, etc) the Spanish speaking world has been largely neglected, in particular South America Ben Harris-Roxas

Policy, environment and health networks  Policy Networks - weak links with policy and policy developers especially internationally.  SEA and health guidance – big win!  Do we need to challenge some of the emerging stereotypes the types of proposals HIAs are used on?  Mainstream public health  Planning and Environmental Networks - weak links elsewhere lots of planning, landscape design and environmental professionals, academics, etc are overlapping with health and health impact studies.  Key examples are: greenspace and health; sustainable communities, health promoting built environments, etc.

Conclusion: In for the long haul How do we get people talking at all sorts of levels?  Coordination between websites and organisations  New web technologies – Facebook, Scribd, etc…  Developing a coherent pathway for novice practitioners  HIA Open Access Journal  HIA research collaborations  More events like this!!!! I still think this might be worth pursuing in some form, particularly if we emphasise that we encourage papers on individual HIAs. It's also worth noting that BMC Public Heaslth has published a paper on HIA recently and I've reveiewed two others for them so the pool of journals willing to publish on HIA may be opening up. Ben Harris-Roxas