About Us
Vision
To be a financially sustainable current, future and historical resource repository, archive, showcase and portfolio for Health Impact Assessment theory, methodology, research, evidence, and practice.
Objectives
Scouring the world wide web for the latest information on the health impacts of development activities and how to assess them, so you don't have to.
Collecting past HIA reports and materials so they - and the information, knowledge and wisdom in them - are not lost over time as websites and organisations change. So much HIA knowledge and materials have been lost like this because it is an under-appreciated field in public health and because projects finish and a website or the materials no longer need to be on a website.
Providing a ‘field memory’, similar to an ‘institutional memory’, so that those who practice HIA in all its forms understand how HIA has evolved and the values, principles that underlie it. HIA is not a tool it is a philosophy, orientation and methodology, an important, though often under-appreciated, public health sub-field in its own right.
Acknowledgement
It is based on the vision and practice of the old UK HIA Gateway developed and funded by the UK Department of Health and my own short-lived HIA Community Wiki project.
Funding
This site is sponsored by Public Health by Design but is a passion project. What we hope is that it can be made into a self-funded and sustainable website with its own income so that it could be hosted by another HIA-focused professional or organisation in the public, private or voluntary sector for the next 100 years.
Origin Story
Sometime between 1999-2003 the UK Health Development Agency (to be written up soon)…
About Me
I’m Salim Vohra and I’m Founder-Director of Public Health by Design, an international public health consultancy. I run it with my friend and fellow public health professional and health impact assessment practitioner Filipe Silva. I am also a Senior Lecturer at the University of West London.
I spent six years ta the Institute of Occupational Medicine as the Director of their Centre for Health Impact Assessment.
I am an expert in the applied science of Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and am an internationally recognised HIA consultant, researcher and teacher.
I have over 17 years of experience in health impact assessment, including community consultation and involvement around health, environmental health risk perception
As a HIA expert, I am interested in how environmental and social factors in the broadest sense affect individual and population health and wellbeing; how health impacts and risks are perceived in society; and how we can come together to balance the health and wellbeing positives and negatives in global, societal and local community policy and decision-making so that they lead to better environmental, social and health outcomes.
I have broad experience of public health and also have expertise in health in other impact assessments (e.g. EIA, SEA, ESHIA); integrated impact assessment; healthy public policy; health in all policies; healthy urban planning; community consultation and stakeholder engagement.
I am currently Adjunct Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Honorary Fellow at Staffordshire University and an Editorial Board Member of the scientific journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review.
About Public Health By Design
Public Health by Design provides public health consultancy services globally blending theory with practice to create positive outcomes and impacts for communities globally.
We have a particular expertise in Health Impact Assessment, including Health in Environmental Impact Assessment and Health in Strategic Environmental Assessment, healthy urban planning and healthy public policy making.
Our vision is be at the forefront of creating a healthier and sustainable future by informing the design, implementation, operation of new and existing projects, programmes, plans, policies and services in high, middle and low-income countries worldwide.
It was established in 2013 and have been doing innovative and valued public health work ever since with a diverse range of partner consultancies, associates and clients.
Between 2013-2021 I worked with my friend Dr. Filipe Silva to do impactful and innovative work in the UK, Europe and globally.