title: Health impact assessment of urban waterway decisions.
abstract: Health impact assessments (HIA) promote the consideration of health in a wide range of public decisions. Although each HIA is different, common pathways, evidence bases, and strategies for community engagement tend to emerge in certain sectors, such as urban redevelopment, natural resource extraction, or transportation planning. To date, a limited number of HIAs have been conducted on decisions affecting water resources and waterfronts. This review presents four recent HIAs of water-related decisions in the United States and Puerto Rico. Although the four cases are topically and geographically diverse, several common themes emerged from the consideration of health in water-related decisions. Water resource decisions are characterized by multiple competing uses, inter-institutional and inter-jurisdictional complexity, scientific uncertainty, long time scales for environmental change, diverse cultural and historical human values, and tradeoffs between private use and public access. These four case studies reveal challenges and opportunities of examining waterfront decisions through a "health lens". This review analyzes these cases, common themes, and lessons learned for the future practice of HIA in the waterfront zone and beyond.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, 601 Elmwood Avenue, Box EHSC, Rochester, NY 14642, USA. Katrina_Korfmacher@urmc.rochester.edu.
authors.forename: Katrina Smith
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Korfmacher
authors.affiliation: Corporación del Proyecto ENLACE del Caño Martín Peña, P.O. Box 41308, San Juan, 00940-1308, Puerto Rico. kaviles@martinpena.org.
authors.forename: Katia
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Aviles
authors.affiliation: Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition/TAG, 210 South Hudson St, Suite 332, Seattle, WA 98134, USA. bj@duwamishcleanup.org.
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Cummings
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences University of Washington School of Public Health, Box 357234, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. bdaniell@uw.edu.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Daniell
authors.affiliation: Minneapolis Health Department, 250 South 4th Street, Rm. 510, Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA. jared.erdmann@minneapolismn.gov.
authors.forename: Jared
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Erdmann
authors.affiliation: University of Rochester Medical Center, 601 Elmwood Avenue, Box EHSC, Rochester, NY 14642, USA. Valerie_Garrison@urmc.rochester.edu.
authors.forename: Valerie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Garrison
mesh_terms: D018672:Community Health Planning / Q000379:methods*; D004777:Environment; D058735:Environmental Policy; D062489:Health Impact Assessment / Q000379:methods*; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D011647:Puerto Rico; D045483:Rivers; D014481:United States; D014881:Water Supply