Table 1 Health Impact Assessment-Related Terminology

Health impact assessment (HIA)

HIA is "a combination of procedures, methods and tools by which a policy, program or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population" [27].

Health equity impact assessment (HEIA)

HEIA has been suggested as a means to ensure that the potential impacts of a proposal on health equity is considered prior to implementation [4, 49]. It is related to the notion of health inequalities impact assessment that was originally proposed a decade ago in the Acheson Review in the UK [12, 50]. Despite these calls, specific guidance on how to conduct HEIAs has not been developed and there are ongoing debates about whether it is possible or desirable to conduct an impact assessment focused solely on health equity without considering more general health impacts [51, 52].

Equity focused health impact assessment (EFHIA)

EFHIA is related to HEIA and was developed in response to concerns that (i) consideration of health equity is often limited within HIAs, often being restricted to the realm of professed values and aspirations [31], and (ii) that it was desirable to improve the methods for considering equity within HIA, rather than developing a separate form of HEIA [52]. The term was first used in the Jakarta Declaration on Leading Health Promotion [53] and subsequently in the Bangkok Declaration [54], but was operationalised with the development of the Equity Focused Health Impact Assessment Framework [46, 47, 55] in 2004. EFHIA focuses on improving the consideration of equity and differential impacts at each step of the HIA process [46, 47]. A rapid EFHIA involves scoping the EFHIA so it can be conducted within a limited time frame with limited resources [56].