engaging the community in hia - 8th int hia conference dublin 2008
TRANSCRIPT
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8/14/2019 Engaging the community in HIA - 8th Int HIA Conference Dublin 2008
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Engaging the community in HIA:the highs and lows of making it fit for purpose
Salim VohraCentre for Health Impact Assessment, Institute of Occupational Medicine in association with Peter Brett Associates
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Centre for Health Impact Assessment
Themes for discussion
1. Are good HIA and good community engagement/consultation a
contradiction?
2. Does community engagement/consultation improve health and wellbeing?
3. How can we plan and cost for effective consultations within HIAs?
4. What are the benefits of consultation and how can we maximise them for
the HIA and the consultation participants?
5. What are the potential barriers and risks of undertaking consultation within
HIAs and how can they be minimised?
6. How do the above vary depending on social, cultural, economic and
geographical context?
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Centre for Health Impact Assessment
3 (+1) project examples
Dart Street Home Zone Community Planning
Wales 3 Regional Waste Plans 1st Review HIA
Development Bank of Southern Africa HIA mainstreaming and capacity
building
(Sustainable Urban Extension Housing Development HIA)
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Centre for Health Impact Assessment
Dart Street Home Zone Community Planning
There were eight key elements to our
local community consultation andplanning. These were:
Local childrens arts competition
Dart Street area community
questionnaire survey Community planning day and street
party
Newsletter and website information
Liaison with key Council, Health and
Highways stakeholders Residents design advisory group
Final exhibition
Consultation Strategy Consultative
Group
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Centre for Health Impact Assessment
Wales 3RWPR HIA
Involved working with aProject Steering Group
Range of health,environmental, waste andcommunity stakeholders thatiteratively developed the HIA
1 page questionnaire toDirectors of Public Healthand Directors/Heads ofEnvironmental Health
Lay representative/advocatewith strong knowledge of
issues, strong contacts involuntary sector
Non Technical Summarycommented on by a layreaders group
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Centre for Health Impact Assessment
DBSA mainstreaming HIA
Involved engaging key internalstakeholders through:
a series of rapid reviewreports
one-to-one meetings
a two day workshop
starting the process ofdeveloping the process andguidelines to embed thesystematic assessment ofthe health impacts of
development proposalswithin its existing impactappraisal processes.
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Getting back to the themes
Are good HIA and good community engagement/consultation a
contradiction?
Does community engagement/consultation improve health and wellbeing?
How can we plan and cost for effective consultations within HIAs?
What are the benefits of consultation and how can we maximise them for
the HIA and the consultation participants?
What are the potential barriers and risks of undertaking consultation within
HIAs and how can they be minimised?
How do the above vary depending on social, cultural, economic and
geographical context?
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Are good HIAs and good communityengagements/consultations a contradiction?
No, but they are difficult to do well together need time, people, skills,
money
Dart St Home Zone Community Planning lots of community consultation
Wales RWPR HIA lots of external professional consultation before a
formal national public consultation in the development of a HIA and Draft
Report
DBSA tightly focused consultation on/awareness raising of and advocacy
on HIA to internal professional staff on HIA
Sustainable Urban Extension HIAs no community or professional
consultation
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Does community engagement/consultationimprove health and wellbeing?
Probably, at least we hope so, some evidence for when done well
Community Engagement Guidance Programme, National Institute of Clinical Excellence, UK, 2007
http://guidance.nice.org.uk/page.aspx?o=CommunityEngagement&c=296726
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How can we plan and cost for effective consultationswithin HIAs?
Consultations are always under-budgeted
The more detailed the planning the better dry weather/wet weather plans
A rule of thumb about costs, maybe even a proper costing spreadsheet.
40-80 per person that you are trying to target plan, carry out andanalyse the consultation (can be more). This is not the people you get, but
the people you hope to get!
Be realistic about numbers of people engaged/involved
Use innovative techniques (because they can be cheap and effective!)
get local people involved, local radio, community radio, student radio,student artists, etc.
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What are the benefits of consultation and how canwe maximise them for the HIA and the consultation
participants?
There are five main reasons why we would want to get stakeholders involved ina HIA (in order of importance in HIA?):
Gain valuable experiential knowledge about a locality, how it functions,past relationships and the impacts of past initiatives
Reduce concern and social and psychological distress
Address social justice issues as residents both existing and new will facethe direct positive and negative health consequences
Empower and enable residents and others to have a voice and influence incommunity processes and thereby reducing the sense of social exclusion,democratic deficit and inequity
Understand the likes and dislikes of local people and others aboutproposal
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What are the benefits of consultation and how canwe maximise them for the HIA and the consultation
participants?
Need to be clear about why stakeholder involvement is being sought andhow these stakeholders views and perspectives will be incorporated intoany resulting assessment and proposal
Within the limited timeframe and influence of HIA the very act ofconsultation should embed some community development but recognisedas being limited and unlikely to create a major change
The key focus should be on gathering evidence (experiential knowledgeabout what is wrong with their communities and what kinds of interventionswork through experience of past project successes and failures) andensuring that communities have a say/voice in the process
Can work at many levels active and passive not everyone will, can or
want to be engaged and that too is part of the process and theirright/privilege to do so
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Centre for Health Impact Assessment
What are the potential barriers and risks ofundertaking consultation within HIAs and how can
they be minimised?
Main challenge is we go in and come out of HIAs relatively fast weeks and months (veryrarely years) and have limited influence on how the HIA findings will be taken forward thereforeour ability to create a consultation process that delivers everything we would like is limited.
We also have to deal with:
Client/commissioner expectations (I have found public and private sector clients can have very
similar ideas about how a consultation should go) Community expectations
Reaching hard to reach groups
Getting enough people
Expensive and time consuming both doing and analysis
To make it valid and credible needs multiple methods of consultation and large numbers ideallyin the 100s and as much diversity of views and people approached as possible (includingchildren and older people). But depends on what question you want answered!
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Centre for Health Impact Assessment
How do the above vary depending on social, cultural,economic and geographical context?
Generally, probably significantly
Culture or Cultures of Consultation?
Poorer, less educated, those with disabilities, language issues have more
difficulty in engaging?
Urban vs rural?
Inner city vs suburb?
But at the core its about building relationships with people, of mutualrespect, trust, reciprocity, cooperation, rapport (even or especially when we
disagree!)
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Centre for Health Impact Assessment
HIA is one part of a wider public health process& consultation is one part of a HIA process
Will you be back next Saturday
Phew,
Its hard workbeing a HIApractitionerjuggling somany things!