The Detroit URC: fostering health equity through 
community-based participatory research (CBPR)
for more than 20 years

Health Impact Assessment Resources

Healthy Neighborhoods for a Health Detroit Health Impact Assessment (D-HIA)

HIA Resources in Detroit

Detroit Environmental Agenda Report
This report focuses on interlinked social, environmental and economic injustices in Detroit and provides tools for how to engage with policy-makers, institutional and business leaders, not-for-profit organizations, and all residents of the city of Detroit to address and environmental concerns. 

City of Detroit – Community Planning Guidebook 
The City of Detroit Community Planning Guidebook provides a framework for how the City of Detroit government (the City) can support communities as they plan for the future of their neighborhoods. It outlines best practices for the creation of comprehensive community plans and provides guidance to communities on how to incorporate community plans into City policy and regulations.

Lower Eastside Action Plan (LEAP) Detroit
The Lower Eastside Action Plan (LEAP) is a community-driven project designed to engage people in a process to transform vacant land and property into uses that improve the quality of life in Detroit neighborhoods and surrounding areas.

Community Development Advocates of Detroit (CDAD)
For 15 years, the Community Development Advocates of Detroit (CDAD) has served as the leading voice for Detroit’s community development industry. With nearly 100 dues-paying members, CDAD advocates for public policies and resources that advance the work of nonprofit, community-based organizations in Detroit neighborhoods who are engaged in physical development, land use planning, community organizing, and other activities designed to stabilize and revitalize the quality of life in Detroit.

City of Detroit Building Demolitions Map
Working with the City of Detroit, Data Driven Detroit has developed an interactive map to visualize the demolition activity in Detroit since 2010. The map allows users to explore city demolitions that are planned to take place or have already been completed. Information for each demoltion is availabe by clicking map markers. The Detroit Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department, which manage the demolition permitting process, provided a list of planned and completed demolitions for the map. 

Responsible Demolition: A Baltimore Case Study with National Implications
This report details how health risks were dramatically reduced through the use of well-planned demolition protocols as part of the East Baltimore Revitalization Initiative.

Demolition What to do to Protect Yourself - Trifold
This pamphlet was created by the University of Michigan Environmental Health Sciences Core Center to provide important information about how to protect yourself if demolition is taking place near you.

Demolition What to do to Protect Yourself - Handbook
This handbook was created by the University of Michigan Environmental Health Sciences Core Center to provide in-depth information about what you should know if demolition is taking place near you.

 

HIA Organizations, Guides & Tools

Health Impact Project
The Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, is a national initiative designed to promote the use of health impact assessments (HIAs) as a decision-making tool for policymakers.

Human Impact Partners
Human Impact Partners challenges the inequities that harm the health of our communities. Through training, technical assistance and research, HIP helps organizations and public agencies who work with low-income communities and communities of color understand the effects of current or proposed projects and policies on community health and use this information to take action.

PolicyLink Health Impact Assessment- A Tool for Equity
This webpage provides resources and materials on how to ensure equity is part of the HIA process, identify principles for equity in HIAs and recommend strategies for the implementation of such principles.

Center for Disease Control- Health Impact Assessment
The CDC’s Healthy Community Design Initiative is the only source of federal expertise to help states and communities integrate health considerations into transportation and community planning decisions.

UCLA Health Impact Assessment Clearing House: Learning & Information Center
This website includes a variety of HIA resources including: examples of recent HIAs, methods for conducting HIA, technical assistance, grant funding opportunities, articles, reports, links, training guides and more.

World Health Organization- Health Impact Assessment
This webpage contains information about HIAs taking place world-wide. It includes basic information, tools and methods, examples across sectors, useful links and more.

New Zealand Ministry of Health- Health Impact Assessment 
This webpage provides practical examples of how HIA has been done in New Zealand, and links to resources and websites to assist you if you are considering conducting an HIA.

Sustainable Communities Index
This resource is a system of indicators for livable, equitable and prosperous cities. This site provides the methods and data sources required for collecting indicators in your city or region and resources for applying these metrics to planning, policy making and civic engagement.

The Pedestrian Environmental Quality Index
This survey was developed to assess the quality of the physical pedestrian environment and inform pedestrian planning needs. It quantifies street and intersection factors empirically known to affect people’s travel behaviors, and is organized into five categories: traffic, street design, land use, intersections, and safety. 

The Bicycle Environmental Quality Index 
This is a quantitative observational survey that assesses the bicycle environment on roadways and evaluates what streetscape improvements could be made to promote bicycling in San Francisco. The survey has 22 empirically-based indicators, each of which has been shown to promote or discourage bicycle riding and connectivity to other modes of transport.

Opportunity Mapping Initiative
The purpose of opportunity mapping is to illustrate where opportunity rich communities exist (and assess who has access to these communities) and to understand what needs to be remedied in opportunity poor communities. Opportunity mapping builds upon the rich history of using neighborhood based information and mapping to understand the challenges impacting our neighborhoods.



Guides to Health Impact Assessment 
This document provides links to selected guides and resources for conducting HIA

Health Impact Assessment: Thinking and Acting – Locally and Globally 
This is a recording of an interactive panel discussion that took place at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in April, 2012. The discussion features applications and emerging trends in HIA. The panel was made up of HIA experts Dinah Bear, JD, Ben Cave, and Aaron Wernham, MD, MS.


 HIA Case Studies and Reports Relevant to Detroit

Lower Shankill Health Impact Assessment (Belfast, Ireland)
Summary Report
Full Report 
This report details the findings of a Health Impact Assessment carried out on the Redevelopment and Regeneration proposals for the Lower Shankill Estate in Belfast in 2006.

Healthy Corridor for All: A Community Health Impact Assessment of Transit-oriented Development Policy in Saint Paul, Minnesota
This report shares the detailed findings and recommendations of a health impact assessment conducted by community organizing partners ISAIAH, Take Action Minnesota, and PolicyLink on a light rail expansion along some of the most racially diverse and economically challenge communities in the Twin Cities.

Rebuilding Neighborhoods, Restoring Health: A Report on the Impact of Foreclosures on Public Health 
Describes the multitude of health and economic impacts that foreclosures are having on individual residents and neighborhoods in Oakland, California, roots the current crisis in the history of housing discrimination, and provides recommendations to help mitigate and prevent further health impacts. Includes original survey data from several Oakland neighborhoods. Produced in conjunction with Causa Justa::Just Cause.

Exodus within an expanding city: The case of Houston’s historic African-American communities

Since being founded in 1836, Houston city has continuously expanded, both in land area and population. But within this predominant pattern of growth there are significant exceptions. Particularly poignant is the case of Houston’s historic African-American neighborhoods. Over the last 50 years most of the neighborhoods have gradually lost population – a result of land speculation practices, disinvestment and the unintended consequences of desegregation. This article focuses on five historic African-American neighborhoods that are shrinking. The narrative histories of the neighborhoods are explored as the foundation for a broader urban design methodology, while also developing urban design strategies that work across scales and processes.

Beating Bank-Owned Blight
When Oakland residents spoke out about trashed foreclosed houses harming their neighborhoods, the city got on board and changed the way it handles code violations on bank-owned properties.

 

HIA Communications Tools

Health Girl in The Health Heros of Greenville 
This cartoon is a production of Ben Cave Associates. 

Health Girl and Friends in From Here to Equality
This cartoon explains, in simple terms, that by working together, those in health and planning can create healthier and more sustainable neghborhoods, with people at the heart of their success. 

HIA Association

SOPHIA – The Society of Practitioners of Health Impact Assessment 
SOPHIA is an organization serving the needs of HIA practitioners in North America and worldwide. Developed by a working group from the 2010 HIA in the Americas Workshop, SOPHIA aims to provide leadership and promote excellence in the practice of HIA.

International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA)
IAIA is the leading global network on best practice in the use of impact assessment for informed decision making regarding policies, programs, plans and projects.

International Association for Impact Assessment Blog
The IAIA blog provided news and information on HIA.

 

 

The Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center
University of Michigan School of Public Health (U-M SPH)
1415 Washington Heights
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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