Common in Britain and Canada, Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) are emerging in the United States as
a critical quantitative component for evaluating health policy. The underlying strength of an HIA lies in the
creation of a reliable modeling tool. This enables informed policy decision-making based on insight into
potential health impacts, while incorporating health awareness into policy making at every level. As HIAs
become more accepted, they have the potential to make concern for improving public health a routine
part of all public policy development.
Dr. Kominski is co-principal investigator for the project at UCLA School of Public Health. The project
began as a joint endeavor of the Washington, D.C. based Partnership for Prevention and researchers at
the UCLA School of Public Health with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The aim of
this project is to assess the feasibility of HIA and to develop prototype HIAs to demonstrate how HIA
methodologies can be applied to policy decisions in the United States.