Scoping Population Health in Impact Assessment (ScopHIA)
Identifying Best Practices for Scoping Major Natural Resource and Large-Scale Infrastructure Projects under Canada's Impact Assessment Act
(Previously titled: Canada’s New Impact Assessment Act: Opportunities for Intersectoral Action in Public Health)
Canada’s Impact Assessment Act provides new opportunities for public health practitioners, researchers, and policy makers working to improve population health equity for many marginalized and vulnerable populations. Impact assessments are federal review processes conducted for major natural resource developments and large infrastructure projects such as mines, oil and gas fields, or pipelines. Typically located in more rural and remote regions of the country, major projects can provide income, employment, and other benefits for nearby communities. At the same time, major projects may pose risks to community health and wellbeing, including exposure to pollution and loss of ecosystem services, stress on community infrastructure and food and water security, and interfering with land-based cultural practices.
Public health involvement in impact assessments can help to identify and mitigate the risks to community health from major projects. For example, the sector’s input can help ensure that federal decision-makers have appropriate information about possible direct health impacts and impacts on the social, economic, and environmental determinants of health.
This webinar will focus on intersectoral opportunities for public health involvement during the 180-day planning period at the beginning of every new impact assessment for a major project, presenting best practices identified through a federally funded systematic realist review of 185 reports from peer-reviewed and gray literature.
Jennifer Ann Brown is a doctoral candidate at the School of Public Health, University of Alberta studying population health equity in impact assessments, recognized with research scholarships from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2017-2020) and Alberta Innovates (2020-2022). She has presented her work on impact assessment in forums such as the International Congress on Circumpolar Health, Arctic Science Summit Week, and the International Association for Impact Assessment. She has also co-authored several articles on healthy public policy in journals such as Social Science & Medicine, Environmental Science & Policy, and Preventive Medicine Reports.
Candace I. J. Nykiforuk is a Professor and Director of the Centre for Healthy Communities in the School of Public Health, University of Alberta, and is part of the Core Committee for Alberta Health Services’ Population, Public and Indigenous Health Strategic Clinical Network. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists (2016-2023), and leads several multi-jurisdictional collaborations on healthy public policy research, with extensive experience engaging target research users to co-create impactful research products.
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