Challenges of Building Health Impact Assessment Capacity in Developing Countries: a Review

Abstract

The published and grey literatures, including online technical reports and guidelines, about Health Impact Assessment (HIA) capacity building and training are reviewed. The review aims to compare country-specific HIA environments and different training materials and to identify appropriate training material for HIA in low- and middle-income (LMIC) settings, such as Mongolia. The few publications about HIA and capacity building found in scientific databases either describe the potential benefits of HIA training or discuss methodological issues. There is, however, a large body of grey literature, mostly institutional, available online. In assessing the HIA training literature, three key points arise: knowing the audiences’ roles when determining training design and content, being culturally sensitive and recognizing traditional knowledge in training and promoting elements of “system-wide capacity building” for HIA. There remains a need to increase the available literature and web content on HIA training and capacity building specifically designed for LMICs. Decisions will have to be made about what to translate and how to translate training materials into languages other than English.