Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is among the practices to consider for supporting the development and adoption of healthy public policies. In Québec, HIA has been in use by the provincial government for almost ten years, since the adoption of the Public Health Act. Considering the important influence of municipal policies on the determinants of health, and given the fact that most HIA around the world is practised at the local level, there has been interest in eventually adapting HIA to this level of decision making for Québec. During 2007-2008, Québéc’s Montérégie region launched an HIA pilot project.
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This report, by the Centre’s Louise St-Pierre and Anika Mendell, presents an account of the HIA project’s start-up, by the public health authority in the Montérégie region, in order to engage the municipal government to undertake health impact assessments of prospective municipal projects or policies. The report describes, in brief, the different stages of the pilot project, the mechanisms put in place to help ensure collaboration, the objectives of the project, the evaluation plan, and the main findings that emerged from the process.
HIA Implementation in Canada: HIA Pilot Project in Montérégie, Québec
45 pages
