Studio H

Health Impact Assessment

Geoff Browne

Studio Description

Humans are both a part, and a product of their ecology and our health is significantly determined not so much by the quality of healthcare systems, but by the quality of the built environments in which we are born, live, work, play and age. For an ever-increasing proportion of society, the city has become humanity’s principle ecology.

Major urban infrastructure projects, such as the Victorian Government’s Level Crossing Removal (LXR) projects, are intended to alter an important aspect of the built ecology for the better, specifically; the transport network. The stated aims of LXR in Victoria are to alleviate car congestion and to increase safety by eliminating risk-taking behaviour. A less explicitly stated objective is to increase employment in the construction industry. Other beneficial outcomes noted by the state government include the creation of open space and more opportunities for active transport. But major projects like LXR have ripple effects that also alter other policy domains that effect determinants of health, sometimes in unintended or undesirable ways.

Health impact assessment (HIA) is a recognised method, with consistent protocols, of evaluating programs, projects or major infrastructure using a determinants of health lens. When conducted on a proposed major infrastructure project, an HIA explicitly puts health, and importantly health equity, front and centre, to ask, ‘How should the proposal be altered to improve the determinants of health equity?’

Studio Outcomes

In this studio, students will investigate the impacts of LXR on the social determinants of health using accepted Health Impact Assessment (HIA) protocols and research methods developed within the studio. The studio will involve collaborative field work, data collection & analysis and the preparation of an HIA to answer the question, “How well does a project, that is primarily designed to facilitate car use, contribute to equitable public health?”

Please note: At the conclusion of the studio, after marks have been awarded, students may be asked if the data they collected during this studio can be used in academic publications. If used, students may be eligible for co-authorship.

Studio Leader

Geoff completed his PhD in 2018 on the use of evidence in statutory municipal health and wellbeing planning. Prior to completing his PhD, Geoff worked at VicHealth as Principal Program Officer, as a consultant for the McCaughey Health and Wellbeing Unit (MSPGH) and for eight years as a senior policy analyst and professional wildfire fighter with the Victorian Environment Department and Environment Commissioner. He was a chief author of the 2008 State of the Environment report and the 2013 State Waste Policy. Geoff also has experience in local government and private practice as a sustainability consultant.

Geoff now works at the University of Melbourne as a subject coordinator, lecturer and researcher across four faculties and has published on a range of issues; Victorian local government's role in health, on health literacy and on sustainability and climate change. Geoff has a special interest in the ecological model of public health, the ‘commercial determinants of health’ and in austerity versus degrowth; or the challenge of enhancing public health equity in the face of energy descent.

Readings & References

• LXRP (2017). Program Business Case. Level Crossing Removal Project. Melbourne, Victorian Government.
• Watt, R. G. (2007). "From victim blaming to upstream action: tackling the social determinants of oral health inequalities." Community dentistry and oral epidemiology 35(1): 1-11.
• Harris, P., et al. (2007). Health Impact Assessment: A Practical Guide. Sydney, Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation (CHETRE).

Travel Coburg, Melbourne | several dates in March-May

Schedule Thursdays 09:00-15:00 in MSD Room 139

Contact Handbook