Lessons learned in capacity building and community participation
Ruth Lindberg, Program Manager, National Center for Healthy Housing, USA
Project Context:
- Panama Canal Authority widening canal
- ...
- Allow double stacked containers with the aim of moving more goods by rail than road
Community context
- 4 proposed candidate sites, do nothing option and potentially another additional candidate sites
- Two sites - rural area, small town, sense of community, peacefulness, people try to support each other
- One rural area had 11 correctional community and a waste treatment facility.
Key health topics:
- Air quality
- Noise
- Employment
- Neighbourhood resources
- Water quality
- Key issue was health equity and how do you avoid burden already vulnerable communities.
- Communities have been pitted against each oth with each saying that the other communities are likely to be better places to put the facility.
- A lot of community distrust, don't feel they are getting truthful responses from government, don't feel involved in the process.
Policy Context
- 4 key agency decision-makers
- Voluntary or Regulatory as part of EIA
- NEPA has a health reference but found decision-makers say that it is already being coved or that health is not part of the Act and hence not needed.
- Asked to do an integrated EIA and HIA but this was not taken up by decision-makers
- We conducted HIA separately from the EIA
Challenges of engaging agency officials in HIA
- No funding
- No legislative authority
- No capacity
- Positive - We were in control of the HIA and the data that was used.
- Negative - that it might be disregarded and not seen as part of the process.
- Community still distrustful of using data from government agencies
Approaches used to engage:
- Training
- Community forums
- Media outreach
- Use existing meetings on other issues
- Engaged local leaders
- Legislators
- Meetings set up out of work hours
Lessons learned
- Set and maintain realistic expectations of HIA influence
- Transparency is critical
- Budget time and resources for engagement
- Engage early and often
- Be prepared for unexpected challenges and setbacks
- Policy change, rumours, lack of information
Lake Merritt HIA
Pilar Lorenzana-Campo, Program Director, Change Lab Solutions, Oakland, California, USA
Public health people, planners and lawyers
- Funded by federal transport agency and this for increasing community participation not to do a HIA
- HIA was used as an approach to engaging community
- Had Health Impact Partners, Environmental Justice and oth advocacy and community groups.
Challenges:
- Too many priorities - many community needs, access for transportation, affordable housing, jobs and services, parks and recreation and public safety.
- Had to deal with funding and timeline constraints.
Overcoming:
- We did not collect any data ourselves but got data from other agencies, but that meant that some things we could not analyse because we did not have that data.
- Used strength of relationship between aspects and health to filter and prioritise issues.
- We developed a clear policy target - affordable housing
- Ensure that existing regional target is maintained 30% affordable.
- Plan and develop family housing
- Provide a development incentive to build affordable housing
Challenges:
Q&A
Q: How did you Do the health assessment on affordable housing?
A: Tried to see where the affordable housing Was and what type of affordable housing there was - restricted and unrestricted, a lot more unrestricted, these units were at risk, this had an implication of forcing people to move. Current incentives are only for 12% rather than the target of 30%, an example is building height by allowing higher levels in return for affordable housing.
Q: how do you use HIA without using HIA?
A: in the intermodal facility how did you get funding to do it, we applied for funding through Health Impact Project, Pew Charitable Trust, had strong relationships with local partners. Ho
E that this will be a successful project for how the Transportation Department in terms of engaging communities.
Q: There is an equity in relation to the 4 sites you mentioned for the intermodal facility? How can you justify siting for example the community with all the correctional facilities?
A: Still struggling with this issue, I don't think we will be recommending any one site, we hope to provide the positives and negatives in each area and to inform decision-makers who will make the decision. Interesting that the site being dismissed has a lot of greenery while the site added had a lot of negative health indicators probably because more concerns expressed and more vocal local politician in the site that was being dismissed.
- Push back from decision-makers, but was mitigated by us identifying the positive impacts of the project.
- Congratulating them on the positives helped to develop trust and an improved relationship.
- Decision-makers came back and asked to look at other documents and had opportunity to provide input into developing policies.
Good stuff
- Building capacity around health and built environment
- A new dynamic in the conversation
- Incorporation of some recommendations into draft plan
- Use of HIA in other projects
Q&A
Q: How did you Do the health assessment on affordable housing?
A: Tried to see where the affordable housing Was and what type of affordable housing there was - restricted and unrestricted, a lot more unrestricted, these units were at risk, this had an implication of forcing people to move. Current incentives are only for 12% rather than the target of 30%, an example is building height by allowing higher levels in return for affordable housing.
Q: how do you use HIA without using HIA?
A: in the intermodal facility how did you get funding to do it, we applied for funding through Health Impact Project, Pew Charitable Trust, had strong relationships with local partners. Ho
E that this will be a successful project for how the Transportation Department in terms of engaging communities.
Q: There is an equity in relation to the 4 sites you mentioned for the intermodal facility? How can you justify siting for example the community with all the correctional facilities?
A: Still struggling with this issue, I don't think we will be recommending any one site, we hope to provide the positives and negatives in each area and to inform decision-makers who will make the decision. Interesting that the site being dismissed has a lot of greenery while the site added had a lot of negative health indicators probably because more concerns expressed and more vocal local politician in the site that was being dismissed.
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