PHES In the News:Save-the-Date: HIA Summer Training Course July 16-19, 2012SFDPH is pleased to announce that they will be offering their fifth annual summer training course for health impact assessment (HIA) practitioners. The overall goal of the course is to provide current and future practitioners of HIA experience using available procedures, regulations and tools to implement an HIA. Registration will open on March 1st and close July 1st. Visit the SFDPH HIA training page for details including the course objectives, location, travel/hotel info, and past year's course agenda and evaluations. Healthy Food Incentives Ordinance December 2011San Francisco's Healthy Foods Incentive Ordinance adopted by the Board of Supervisors in 2010 became effective on December 1, 2011. The law requires that restaurant meals provided with free incentive items meet child nutritional standards established by the city. DPH has already identified several restaurant chains in San Francisco affected by the law. After December 1, DPH will be communicating with these restaurants to provide assistance and advice and to ensure compliance. In early 2012, DPH will provide a mechanism for members of the public to notify Department staff of potential violations of the law. HIA Guide for Practice November 2011To further the Department's support of high quality HIA practice, Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, the Director of Occupational and Environmental Health has authored Health Impact Assessment: A Guide for Practice. The Guide describes the key tasks and activities for HIA and discusses the issues and challenges that arise in the field. The Guide is based on the practice, evaluation, and training of Health Impact Assessment conducted by SFDPH with its many local, regional, and national partners. Promoting Health and Safety in San Francisco's Chinatown Restaurants October 2011The findings and lessons learned from a pilot observational checklist to assess preventable occupational injury hazards and compliance with employee notification requirements in 106 restaurants in San Francisco’s Chinatown are now published in a special supplement on data systems and social determinants of health in the peer-reviewed journal Public Health Reports. The Worker Health and Safety in Chinatown Restaurants project was a multi-year, NIOSH-funded community-based participatory research project of SFDPH, the Chinese Progressive Association, UC Berkeley School of Public Health, the Labor Occupational Health Program, and UCSF Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. National Academies of Science Lauds Health Impact Assessments September 2011On September 8th, 2011, the National Academies of Science (NAS), released its report, Improving Health in the United States: The Role of Health Impact Assessment. The report, authored by the National Research Council's Committee on Health Impact Assessment, emphasized that factoring health and related costs into decision making is essential to confronting the nation's health problems and enhancing public well-being. The report’s conclusion: health impact assessment (HIA) is a promising tool for use by scientists, communities, and government and private-sector policymakers. The report offered guidance to officials in the public and private sectors on conducting HIAs to evaluate public health consequences of proposed decisions—such as those that improve transportation, plan growth, improve labor conditions, and regulate agriculture. The committee further recommended that HIA could be better integrated into environmental impact assessment (EIA). The committee identified several challenges to the successful use of HIA, such as balancing the need to provide timely information with the realities of variations in data, producing quantitative estimates of health effects, and engaging stakeholders. Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, SFDPH Director of Environmental Health, served on the committee co-authoring the report as an international expert in the practice of HIA. Older News Items: Click Here |
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