Health Impact Assessment

Health Impact Assessment (HIA)

Health Impact Assessment is a joint learning process of our society to assessing impact on health and social determinants of health from policies, programmes and projects using quantitative, qualitative and participatory techniques. It aims to develop evidence-based recommendations that inform decision-making in order to protect and improve society’s health and wellbeing. We promote HIA at the national and community levels while also expanding it into ASEAN countries.

Since 2009, HIA Commission is established to develop HIA system and mechanism including knowledge management and capacity building.

Apart from the Commission, HIA Consortium is also set up under collaboration with at least nine universities to give a technical support to the Commission and lean a helping hand to communities.

A community or a group of affected people themselves can submit a petition to NHCO requesting assessment of the health impact of public policies, programmes and projects. At various occasions, we facilitate HIA to support the communities as well as encourage them to conduct HIA. Projects including Maptaphut industrial estate in Rayong province, biomass power plant in Roi-et and Surin provinces, gold mining in Loei and Phitsanulok province, a commercial port in Chachoengsao province, etc. We also conduct a series of HIA training courses in 5 regions of Thailand to capacity building local communities and related stakeholder to do HIA by themselves.

After the launch of the first HIA guideline in 2009, the National Health Commission published the second HIA guideline in 2016 to keep it up to date. Thailand’s HIA Guideline is used as a model for other countries such as Bhutan to develop its own guideline. Furthermore, NHCO has established collaboration with the ASEAN HIA network and the Greater Mekhong Subregion Health Accademic Network. Our common goal is to enhance HIA’s capacity.

HIA in ASEAN

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) was officially introduced to ASEAN community since 2010. ASEAN assigned Thailand as a lead country to build capacity and advocate HIA for ASEAN members. Form 2010-2014 was a phase of setting up ASEAN focal point on HIA which compose of representative of ministry of public health and universities sector. During this phase, the experiences of HIA application from different countries were shared to build mutual understanding of HIA.

Form 2015 onward, the ASEAN focal points on HIA have realized the limited workforce on HIA and agreed to empower and build capacity of planners, academia, health personnel, civil societies and investors on HIA.

This is the phase of demonstrating HIA application through on-the-job trainings, joint projects, workshops, trainings or meetings.