Author: Josh Artus - Healthy Places & Urban Strategy Lead, Centric Lab With thanks to fundings from the Community Knowledge Fund we've now formally launched the Community Health Impact Assessment peer-to-peer learning programme, starting in the new year - www.urbanhealthcouncil.com/programs/chiat. Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) should be more powerful with community voices shaping planning based on health needs. Existing legislation and guidance 'advise' on it, but the industry has skewed things to their advantage. We feel this can change by upholding the 4 values as directed by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Our Community Health Impact Assessment peer-to-peer learning programme is for people and groups who feel the same and want to improve planning conditions and the behaviours of development stakeholders in their local areas. Key info:
Urban planning and economic development promise a lot. You’d therefore expect that a trickle-down effect of ~£35bn per year in real estate development would start paying some social health dividends. It appears, however, that the only thing that trickles down is the bad stuff. Physical and mental health disorders continue to rise, as do the towers of mostly unaffordable apartments across our skylines; non-communicable diseases now count for 89% of deaths in the UK. Despite the best endeavours of hard-working social, care, and health workers, we’re still facing an uphill battle. We’re being bombarded with environmental and psychological stressors, causing a disruption to the natural workings of our central nervous systems. The prevalence of fine particulate matter, carcinogenic chemical pollution, and mass production of endocrine disrupting chemicals cause evidential harms linked to various cancers, including those in our reproductive system, as well as depression, anxiety, Parkinson’s, dementia, autoimmune disorders, obesity, diabetes, miscarriages, and neurodevelopmental disruption in the womb. Professors Sapolsky and Geronimus have for decades led a medical movement to detail the biological impacts of psychological stress. Yet, when our health is evaluated it’s typically from a behavioural aspect: are we getting enough exercise; are we eating nutritious food; are we taking time out for meditation? As many will tell you, these metrics gaslight, demean, and ignore the socio-economic and cultural factors that (a) allow for those conditions to even be possible, and (b) ignore the more insidious daily biological impacts to health we experience without our knowing or consent. Take for example, a recent National Health Service (NHS) advertisement which shows a racialised Black woman eating a salad as a solution for obesity. This negates the complexity of the disease, which is a dysregulation of various biological systems with links to childhood trauma, exposure to air pollution, malnutrition, and even light pollution. Framing obesity only as a set of behavioural choices is inaccurate. We need to start rethinking our approaches to health: what affects it, and who’s setting the guidelines as to what matters? We need to have an evaluation process for health that is more closely in tune with our realities of living in complex urban environments with multiple top-down stressors. Conveniently, our parliamentary and policy systems recognise the value of public engagement in service design. Going back as far as 2010, the Empowerment White Paper highlighted the findings of the survey of local authority officers in 2006 which found that “the great majority of them believed that public engagement in their authority or service had led to better services.” The WHO advise that an HIA is “a practical approach used to judge the potential health effects of a policy, programme or project on a population, particularly on vulnerable or disadvantaged groups”. This could be that very instrument to embody public engagement for better services and outcomes, however as a predominantly technocratic procedure, its core principles have been watered down and influenced by vested interests. If our governance and planning systems abided by the WHO guidance (like it does elsewhere) we would see some of the following activity associated to its intended 4 interlinking values: ●Democracy (involving stakeholder participation): At some point throughout the local, regional and national government systems a recognition that the design of HIAs is dependent upon the people who are impacted and those associated with the “wider determinants of health”. ● Equity (considering the impact on the whole population): Effective baselining to understand the health vulnerabilities and cultural nuances to determine whether supposed physical or policy interventions have any form of correlation to impact. ●Sustainable development: The understanding that places and neighbourhoods require a cultural qualification to determine their longevity, such as the growing need for multi-generational living in the home and not single unit housing delivered through typical housing minimum standards. ● Ethical use of evidence: Where broad associations between an intervention and health projection are not made, nor without analysis to the social programming that’s essential to its success. There is a wealth of evidence from USA & Canada on the value of community involvement in designing Impact Assessments. It’s time we start designing them ourselves and advocating for our authorities to start implementing them. Over the past year Centric Lab & Clean Air for Southall & Hayes have been working closely together to better understand how a community-led and designed HIA can refocus the £bns of development related finance to support community health needs and evaluate whether something is actually a “positive” impact on health. We have been awarded grant funding to support 10 individuals with a £500 stipend each through a peer-to-peer learning process and additional funding for them working with their own community groups to use a toolkit to deliver a community led HIA. We believe that your expertise deserves to be treated the same as the consultants paid by the system. The programme starts on 24th January 2024, with an application deadline of 8th January. We’re inviting members and friends of the Community Planning Alliance to join groups from around the UK, working alongside each other to bring a greater sense of democracy, knowledge and dignity into the planning system for better health outcomes. Apply now: www.urbanhealthcouncil.com/programs/chiat
1 Comment
27/1/2025 11:08:30 am
Los Angeles outpatient centers offer convenient, effective treatment for various mental health concerns, providing the necessary tools and support for individuals to maintain progress while living at home.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
The Small Print
Sitemap Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions © Community Planning Alliance Limited 2022-2023 : All Rights Reserved A company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, no. 13829789 |
|