Health, Social and Economic Subcommittee advice for the President of the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada

The Health, Social and Economic Subcommittee provides the following high level advice to the President of IAAC for Agency research and action priorities related to this topic in fiscal 2021-22. We recommend that IAAC;

  1. Develop a “Policy Context” guidance document similar to those already in the Practitioner’s Guide, related to Health, Social and Economic impact assessment, which includes the roles of responsible government authorities and jurisdictions,
  2. Develop, in collaboration with responsible government authorities, health impact guidance that focuses on social determinants of health that are pertinent to the context of impact assessments and the objectives of the Act, and inform the phases of the IA process,
  3. Clearly indicate in guidance and the TISGs how mental health impacts will be considered in health impact assessment and develop additional resources on this currently weakly integrated topic,
  4. Revisit and incrementally update the existing H,S,E Guidance document; the H,S,E subcommittee will be providing compiled potential revisions for the TAC and then IAAC to consider in Q2 2021,
  5. Conduct additional research toward developing internal policies and guidance for practitioners related to the role of research ethics in impact assessment involving human subjects,
  6. Carefully consider and properly integrate Health Canada’s forthcoming health impact assessment guidance prior to updating the existing H,S,E Guidance document as per above, with special emphasis on making sure that the Agency guidance for health impact assessment adheres to the full expectations of the Act,
  7. Develop additional publicly available “Practitioner Resources” for health, social and economic effects assessment, and
  8. Consider the status of in-house expertise on health, social and economic impact assessment at the Agency, and where there are capacity issues, develop a plan for improving capacity to assist the Agency and panels with health, social and economic impact assessment.

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