HIA and EIA Are Different, but Maybe Not in the Way We Thought They Were: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Background: The fields of Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) have grown with increasing numbers of disciplines and sectors contributing to their advancements, but with it, perceived conflict over methodological and disciplinary approaches to integrate health in impact assessments. This study maps the current field of HIA and health in EIA to examine the scientific landscape of the field. Methods: We carried out a bibliometric analysis of HIA papers and EIA papers that included a health focus in peer-reviewed journals in the Web of Science Core Collection (n = 229). We carried out co-authorship and co-citation network analyses of authors and documents in VOSviewer. Results: We identified two main co-authorship and co-citation groupings. Our document co-citation analysis also identified four clusters with two major groups, the Defining HIA cluster and the Describing the fields cluster versus the Active transport quantitative HIA cluster, and the Quantitative modelling tools cluster. Conclusion: Our findings strongly suggest that there exist two groups of thought in the scholarly fields of HIA and health in EIA. Barriers to developing more methodologically integrated approaches to considering health within EIA are related more to disciplinary differences than field (HIA versus EIA)-based differences and we advocate for the development of transdisciplinary approaches to both HIA and EIA.

Health impact assessment institutionalisation in France: state of the art, challenges and perspectives

“…This rapprochement could lead HIA practitioners to be more focused in the analysis of different options and not only in improving the proposal (Fischer et al 2021). As pointed out by Kim and Haigh (2021), EIA and HIA are based on distinct paradigms and research traditions. Even though there is still progress to be made to build up an interdisciplinary view of health and integrated methods, as in other countries (Chanchitpricha and Bond 2018;Fischer et al 2021), an ongoing rapprochement between these two fields in France constitutes an opportunity for the future development of HIA (Roué-Le Gall and Jabot 2017; Cave et al 2021).…”

Prospects and Perspectives of Health Impact Assessment: A Systematic Review of the Peer-Reviewed Literature From June 2007 to January 2023

“…Hence, research-driven HIA usually focus on a few health outcomes, while step-by-step HIA generally apply a more holistic perspective on potentially affected health determinants and outcomes and adheres to more standardised frameworks [ 1 ]. Just as the two types of HIA differ in the overall methodological approach, there is little overlap in authorship, as reported in a recent study [ 15 ].…”