Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Despite increasing attention given to human rights and health by policy makers and researchers there are limited methodologies and tools developed to identify relationships between a proposed action, human rights and health. In the absence of such explanations it is difficult to decide 'what to do' to improve human rights and health outcomes. This presentation reports on findings of research integrating human rights into Health Impact Assessment methodology (HRHIA).

Methods

A 4-stage critical realist (CR) framework for theory development and verification was used. Each step involved the analysis and use of data from: 2 rounds of interviews with 23 international human rights (HR) and health impact assessment (HIA) experts; data from existing case studies of HIAs (11 case studies, 33 interviews) and of the application of a human rights-based approach (1 case study, 12 interviews); researcher recollections and introspections on HIA projects.

Results
A HRHIA methodology framework was developed consisting of: environment, knowledge, goals, rationale, conceptual frameworks, processes, and criteria and standards. We found that integrating human rights changes HIA in terms of: what is assessed; the phenomena to be considered, the ways HIA can work, how power is considered and also the process for carrying out HIA.

Conclusion

A Health Rights Health Impact Assessment tool could support decision makers to adopt public policies, programs and projects that are most likely to contribute to fulfilling human rights obligations and improving human development outcomes while also providing potentially affected communities and civil society organisations with a tool for influencing decision-making.