The integration of health into environmental assessments - with a special focus on strategic environmental assessment (2018)

This research project examines the integration of health into environmental assessment such as environmental impact assessments (EIA) and strategic environmental assessments (SEA), and analyses the challenges and opportunities that EIA and SEA offer to further address health issues.

The overall objective of the research was to identify the main methods, tools, institutional and procedural factors that facilitate the integration of environmental health aspects into environmental assessments such as SEA.

For this five research questions were formulated regarding:

1. the environmental health aspects mainly considered in environmental assessments and specifically in SEAs;
2. the way of how these aspects are considered;
3. if and how these aspects are considered in guidelines on SEA;
4. the main barriers and facilitators for the integration of health in environmental assessments; and
5. the kind of capacity building activities needed to further support the integration of assessing health impacts into environmental assessments.