Health Impact Assessment : Expanding Public Policy Tools for Promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Nigeria

Being able to predict the probable health impact within a population and its dispersion, arising from a policy, program, or project is indispensable. To achieve this, a blend of procedures, methods and tools is usually utilized. This is the core definition of a Health Impact Assessment (HIA). Note that by shifting focus more broadly to “potential effects on health,” including both positive and nega-tive effects, interventions can be evaluated beyond simply risk or hazard reduction. Thus, HIA can be a useful tool for stakeholders when considering multiple outcomes to be optimized to attain population-wide benefits. Also, the HIA framework encourages the analysis of synergistic pressures on environmental public health. Stakeholder concerns are variable across multiple criteria but can generally be grouped into (a) quality of life, (b) political, (c), economic or (d) moral concerns. Therefore, key components that are important to the development partners and multi-stakeholders HIA process include sustainability, equity/democracy, and ethical use of evidence. Hence, public health is central to all these stakeholder interests. Health is essential to the quality of life, viewed by many as a fundamental human right, and is central to many economic impacts and political actions. The principles of HIA are therefore clearly suited to considering the full set of implications of any of the range of policy options that could affect health in association with environmental disasters such as drought, desertification, flooding, groundwater pollution, oil spillage, and climate change, etc. However, the need for policymakers, development partners and relevant stakeholders to build capacity and engagement will further contribute to the improvement of standards and practical application of these methodologies to such upstream decisions and to pay increased attention to prioritization and economic implications to ensure that the assessments have a true impact on the eventual outcome of decisions and that their true potential is realized through advancing and promoting sustainable development goals espe-cially in this current COVID-19 pandemic