Happy & Healthy Places
Integrated Health and Environmental Impact Assessments
An integrated approach to community assessments allows for a single, collaborative process that promotes increasingly effective community planning and action with a more efficient use of resources. An increased understanding as to how decisions in land use and environmental policies influence the health of a population is necessary on all levels from community residents to high-level policy makers. The extraordinary connection between the built environment and the health of a population has been undervalued. The value of this integrated approach is that the findings, outcomes and recommendations lead to stronger policies and implementation strategies. So often, an assessment is completed but fails in real policy change or program/project implementation on local and community levels. This assessment approaches addresses the historic deficiencies in other assessment models.