Abstract
Public health practitioners and policy makers in Australia
have a long history of advocating for health impact
assessment (HIA) to be undertaken on major public and
private projects and policies. Over the past decade a number
of internationally recognised guidelines and discussion
papers have been developed in Australia that have tried
to strengthen HIA in environmental impact assessment
processes. Internationally, advocates for the development
of healthy public policy have promoted HIA as a necessary
step in policy development. Those with an interest in
reducing health inequalities have supported this and called
for a closer examination of the distributional impacts on
groups within the population, especially those groups most
marginalized or disadvantaged.
