Engaging the community in HIA - 8th Int HIA Conference Dublin 2008

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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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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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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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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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.


7/15Centre for Health Impact Assessment

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?



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



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



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.



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



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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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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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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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!

Engaging the community in HIA - 8th Int HIA Conference Dublin 2008

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