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Why another health impact assessment (HIA) website?
There are already a number of great HIA websites around the world; the HIA Gateway and the WHO HIA Portal to name but two.
However, most of the HIA websites aren't updated quickly and don't provide the full breadth and depth of knowledge that is out there on health impacts and HIA.
They also don't provide their knowledge in a format that I can get at within a few clicks of a mouse. Most require over five clicks or more to access information. The aim of this website is to enable you to get to what you want in less than five clicks and ideally in no more than two to three clicks of a mouse.
Plus, most of the HIA websites - if not all - are not designed to allow website visitors to fully interact and participate in the website by adding links and new material, repairing broken links and helping to dynamically change the format of the website to make it a more useful website for HIA practitioners and the wider public health community.
Lastly, most of the HIA websites have a strong national focus with few attempting to provide a comprehensive and integrated perspective on HIA practice internationally.
What this website is?
This HIA website aims to provide up-to-date information, knowledge and, hopefully, wisdom on HIA theory, policy and practice from across the world.
This HIA website aims to enable anyone and everyone, just by typing in their email address and setting up a password, to get involved in building a health impact community that shares and discusses HIA experiences, ideas and insights.
Register with www.pbworks and this specific wiki website and you can become an active and contributing member of this wiki website.
This HIA website aims to provide the full breadth and depth of HIA information and knowledge available in the public domain internationally (in the English language in the first instance). Its focus therefore is on sources that are accessible to anyone with internet access.
This HIA website aims to empower you to be an active participant in the international HIA community as well as help you to solve the HIA policy and practice issues that you are dealing with or may deal with at some time in your work.
These aims are ambitious but as David Thoreau once said, "People only hit what they aim at, so aim high even if you should fail immediately." I hope that some of the information, knowledge, ideas and approaches developed in this 'experimental' website - yes you can really experiment with every part of it - will find themselves adopted by more 'formal' organisational websites on HIA.
Finally, this is the first ever health impact assessment wiki and I know it certainly won't be the last. Wiki's are part of what's been dubbed the Web 2.0
revolution where websites interact with their viewers and users and in essential ways are 'owned' by them. We foresee wikis playing major part in public health policy and practice.
What this website is not?
This HIA website is not in direct competition with existing HIA websites. In fact it links to as many of them as possible.
This HIA website complements and adds to the richness and diversity of resources on HIA available on the world wide web.
Who owns this website?
I'm Salim Vohra and I'm the Director of the centre for Health Impact Assessment at the Institute of Occupational Medicine. The idea for this site was mine and I currently fund and manage it.
Want to know more about me? Then check out my HIA personal page or 'Email Me'.
If you want to help me administer the site and be a co-administrator then please also get in touch.
Who funds this website?
At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, I do. I may in the future consider ads on the site or sponsors of the site to ensure its long term financial viability.
The key constraint is not money but time. There is a lot of material on the world wide web on health impacts and health impact assessment that need to be catalogued.
When was this website established?
This wiki website was established in February 2006 and publicised in June 2006. It was hosted at www.seedwiki.com until August 2009. It had a six month period between January - August 2009 when I was not actively updating the wiki.
Disclaimer
The ideas, opinions, views and perspectives expressed on this website are therefore not necessarily the opinions, views and perspectives of my employers, or the employers of contributing members or of any of the organisations that have links to or from this website.
Website ethos
The aim of this wiki website is to be an inclusive educational resource that takes account of linguistic, disability and diversity issues wherever possible and feasible. Ulitimately, I hope it'll be a force for good.
Its aim is not to cause offence or infringe on any individual's or organisation's legal and moral rights. If you feel that this has occurred on this wiki then please email me at drsalimvohra (at) gmail (dot) org and I will do my best to find an amicable solution to your complaint or grievance.
Copyright and copyleft issues
Wherever possible the aim of this wiki is to provide information and material freely available either as public domain works or with a Creative Commons licence such as share and share-alike (see licence below). See also the idea-expression divide
.
However, the majority of the works linked to or downloadable from this site are the copyright of the individual or institutional author/s of those materials unless explicitly stated otherwise in those materials. Permission to use their material beyond that of fair use for comment, criticism, research and scholarly activity should be made directly to the author, authors or institution concerned.
In all cases it is good form, good practice and a personal and professional courtesy that any material you use based on other people's work whether in the public domain, with copyright or copyleft, is explicitly cited with a clear reference to the original author or authors or the organisation that commissioned the work and the year in which the material was first published.
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