Screening in health impact assessment: issues and practice in France
Open accessAbstract
Abstract Background Health impact assessment (HIA) is a method aimed at anticipating the potential effects of proposals on health prior to their implementation in order to include health issues in decisions made outside the health sector. It is structured in several steps. The first one (screening), aimed to decide if a full assessment is required or not, is poorly documented. In France, the interest shown for HIA has led to a growing number of experiments, which questions the quality of practices linked to this step and its capacity to fulfil its purpose. This study describes how screening is implemented, explores the main issues at this stage, the decision-making process and to what extent it conditions the HIA's success. Methods All HIAs undertaken between 2011 and 2019 were listed in order to provide a picture of the process. Then, we focused on the 3 most involved regions to describe the screening process (reports, interviews, observation). Drawing on quality standards and literature review, we built an analytical framework to analyze practices, the interface with other approaches, the influence of the local context and the HIA's success factors. Results 59 HIAs were identified. Among them, 54 have gone beyond screening. HIAs are applied to land use planning (72%,) policies (19%), equipments (9%) and are carried out by public organisations (37%), private firms (35%), universities (15%), municipalities (13%). 11 regions (out of 18) conducted at least one HIA and practice varies significantly across regions. Case studies in 3 regions (36 HIAs) show that screening length and depth vary greatly. Its features depend on political commitment to HIA, advocacy for HIA, guidance, relationship with local authorities, technical skills. Overall, screening is more dedicated to promote HIA and select a pilot project than to study the HIA's relevance and feasibility. Conclusions Since screening is methodologically poorly underpinned, it weakens HIA's quality and efficiency whatever its duration. Key messages Screening step is key to raise decision-makers’ awareness of the consequences of their engagement in HIA. Screening allows to ensure that HIA is the relevant method for the project and the conditions are met to gain its utility.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Not all of these works were completed, and some borrowed elements from the HIA approach without adopting it in its entirety.
“Cependant, tous ne sont pas arrivés à terme et certains ont emprunté des éléments à la démarche sans toutefois l'adopter dans son intégralité[23].”
From L’évaluation d’impact sur la santé pour scruter et sculpter les politiques (2021) · cites this paper as [23]
The Results report that 54 of 59 identified HIAs went beyond screening, supporting the narrower point that not all proceeded to later stages. They do not say whether the remaining five were unfinished, and the Methods mention an interface with other approaches without reporting that some works borrowed HIA elements while declining to adopt the full approach. No page number is available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.76)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredHIA practitioners in France belong to public or private organizations, notably local health observatories (37% of cases), consultant firms (35%), universities (19%), and municipalities (13%).
“Les praticiens EIS appartiennent à des organismes publics ou privés, notamment les observatoires locaux de la santé (37 % des cas), des bureaux de consultants (35 %), des universités (19 %) et des municipalités (13 %) [23].”
From L’évaluation d’impact sur la santé pour scruter et sculpter les politiques (2021) · cites this paper as [23]
The Results passage reports that the French HIAs were carried out by public organisations (37%), private firms (35%), universities (15%) and municipalities (13%). It does not identify the public organisations as local health observatories, and the claim gives 19% for universities rather than the reported 15%. (LLM, conf=0.90)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredLa première étape de l'EIS est fondamentale pour repérer les obstacles potentiels et n'engager une EIS que si des marges de manœuvre existent.
“Ainsi, la première étape de l'EIS est fondamentale afin de repérer ces potentiels obstacles et de n'engager une EIS que si des marges de manœuvre existent[23].”
From L’évaluation d’impact sur la santé pour scruter et sculpter les politiques (2021) · cites this paper as [23]
The Background identifies screening as the first step, used to decide whether a full HIA is needed. The Key messages say it checks whether HIA is relevant and whether conditions are met for it to be useful. The copy does not specifically say that screening identifies potential obstacles or that an HIA should proceed only when there is room for manoeuvre. (LLM, conf=0.78)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
L’évaluation d’impact sur la santé pour scruter et sculpter les politiques
Jabot, F. (2021) · Santé Publique · doi:10.3917/spub.211.0007 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Jabot, F., & Dardier, G.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique (FR)
- ORCID
- Venue
- European Journal of Public Health
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2020-09-01
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- Supplement_5
- ISSN
- 1101-1262 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-360X
- OpenAlex
- W3092644721
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 0.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model (vor)
- Locations
- European Journal of Public Health (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › Environmental and Social Impact Assessments
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Public Health Policies and Education
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Public Health and Environmental Issues
- Keywords
- health impact assessment, screening, decision-making, land use planning, regional variation, France
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
