Comment évaluer les e?ets des évaluations d'impact sur la santé: le potentiel de l'analyse de contribution

Abstract

Health impact assessments (HIA) allow the potential impact of nonhealth-related actions (policy, project, program) on health to be analyzed. For example, municipal projects, for urban renewal or urban planning, have an impact on health drivers relating to the created environment, and thus, on public health. In the province of Quebec, the government and afliated organizations have to comment on potential impacts; they use HIAs to ensure health is factored into public actions. We know little about HIAs' capacity to in?uence public policies; every policy and program is di?erent and is ofen implemented only once, greatly complicating evaluation. Our goal is to analyze the potential of contribution analysis for evaluating the impact of HIAs at the municipal level. To this end, we present the HIA process as implemented in Montérégie, we identify evaluation challenges, and put forth, through contribution analysis, an evaluation strategy to analyze e?ects.