Health Impact Assessment of Urban Waterway Decisions

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Katrina Smith Korfmacher³  Katia Aviles⁵  B.J. Cummings⁴  William Daniell²  Jared Erdmann¹  Valerie Garrison⁶ 

[1] Minneapolis Health Department, 250 South 4th Street, Rm. 510, Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA; E-Mail:;Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences University of Washington School of Public Health, Box 357234, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; E-Mail:;Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, 601 Elmwood Avenue, Box EHSC, Rochester, NY 14642, USA;Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition/TAG, 210 South Hudson St, Suite 332, Seattle, WA 98134, USA; E-Mail:;Corporación del Proyecto ENLACE del Caño Martín Peña, P.O. Box 41308, San Juan, 00940-1308, Puerto Rico; E-Mail:;University of Rochester Medical Center, 601 Elmwood Avenue, Box EHSC, Rochester, NY 14642, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: health impact assessment;    urban development;    urban health;    environment and public health;    water quality;    recreation;    rivers;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph120100300

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Health impact assessments (HIA) promote the consideration of health in a wide range of public decisions. Although each HIA is different, common pathways, evidence bases, and strategies for community engagement tend to emerge in certain sectors, such as urban redevelopment, natural resource extraction, or transportation planning. To date, a limited number of HIAs have been conducted on decisions affecting water resources and waterfronts. This review presents four recent HIAs of water-related decisions in the United States and Puerto Rico. Although the four cases are topically and geographically diverse, several common themes emerged from the consideration of health in water-related decisions. Water resource decisions are characterized by multiple competing uses, inter-institutional and inter-jurisdictional complexity, scientific uncertainty, long time scales for environmental change, diverse cultural and historical human values, and tradeoffs between private use and public access. These four case studies reveal challenges and opportunities of examining waterfront decisions through a “health lens”. This review analyzes these cases, common themes, and lessons learned for the future practice of HIA in the waterfront zone and beyond.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.