The San Francisco Department of Public Health conducted an HIA in response to community requests in the Mission, South of Market, and Potrero Hill neighborhoods. The HIA addressed a range of factors in the community plans that could affect health, including housing affordability; the potential that low-income residents could be displaced; the availability of safe places to walk; noise; air quality; employment; public services; and access to parks and open space. Rather than advance a specific set of recommendations, the HIA supported developing the Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT) as its main outcome, which was then recommended for future use.
Outcome
The HIA brought together organizations and individuals who were previously not included in the city’s planning process. The process provided a space to collaboratively develop a vision and objectives for development in the city and then to submit those formally for consideration to planning staff. The HDMT, now known as the San Francisco Indicator Project, is an online framework and data repository that helps stakeholders examine how San Francisco neighborhoods perform on eight aspects of this vision for healthy, equitable city development. The San Francisco Indicator Project has been used to provide baseline data on many assessments, to plan evaluations of its long-term planning process, and for advocacy and research. The indicators, objectives, and methods have been used and adapted by at least five other cities in the U.S. and in Geneva, Switzerland.
–
This Health Impact Assessment Report first appeared in The Cross-Sector Toolkit for Health. The Cross-Sector Toolkit for Health was originally developed by the Health Impact Project, formerly a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts. The creation of this resource was supported by a grant from the Health Impact Project. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Pew Charitable Trusts, or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
