Health Assessment - Types, Uses, and Areas of Risk Management

This article discusses the different types of health assessments, their uses, and areas of risk management. It also explores the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and Public Health Assessment (PHA) used by the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP).

Running Head: HEALTH ASSESSMENT
Health assessment
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Health assessment
Health assessment or evaluation is described as the assessment of an individual health
status along health continuum.
Different types of Health assessments according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
There are different types of health assessments that has ben designed by CDC to evaluate
the various health sectors in the United states of America. The health assessments include;
Health Impact Assessment (HIA) which is basically used to examine consequences of proposed
decision of public health in the non-health areas (Centers for disease control and prevention,
2016). HIA is considered aa a systematic process which uses myriad of sources of data as well as
analytic methods and considers inputs from various stakeholder so as to determine the potential
impacts of a proposed project, plan, policy, or program on health of a given population and
whether such effects are evenly distributed within such population.
Community Health Assessment also known as community health needs assessment, is
described as the systematic and orderly evaluation of the status of health indicators for a specific
population which is used in identifying vital problems as well as community assets. The eventual
goal of this type of assessment is to come up with strategies which address the needs of a
community and the specific identified problems. Cost-Benefit Analysis is considered as a type of
economic examination which measures both benefits and costs which are associated with an
intervention in regards to dollar terms. It should be noted that since HIA classically does not
evaluate the costs which are linked with its proposed strategies which promote and mitigate
adverse health effects (Dannenberg, et al 2006), a CBA is conducted in order to assist in
deciding which HIA recommendations are most viable and feasible.

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Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is described as a systematic process of
identifying, mitigating as well as evaluating the social, biophysical and other vital impacts of
proposed projects prior to vital decisions are made. It is interesting to note that EIA are currently
a prerequisite requirement not only in the USA but also in most countries in the world. Human
Health Risk Assessment is described as a analytic, quantitative process to estimate risk and
nature of adverse impacts of human health linked with the exposure to specified hazards or
chemicals in the environment currently and in the future. Public Health Assessment is described
as a process for examining and assessing the implications of public health of exposures to
environmental pollution or contamination. PHA which was developed by the Agency for toxic
substances and disease registry is formally described as the examination of information and data
on the release of chemicals and hazardous substances into the surrounding so as to assess any
current, past and future effect on public health, come up with health advisories or
recommendations as well as to identify actions or studies which are required to assess and
prevent or mitigate human health impacts.
Health assessment used by the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP)
ACMP is a leading organization that strives to ensure patient are accessed to quality and
affordable medicine, improving, thus, health assessment that is used by AMCP is the Health
Impact Assessment (HIA) and Public Health Assessment (PHA). It should be noted that HIA is
considered as a means of evaluating health impacts of projects, programs, plans and policies in
diverse economic areas using participatory, qualitative and quantitative approaches (Mccallum,
et al 2016; Waheed, et al 2018;). On the other hand, AMCP has a vision of this organization is to
generally improve the level of healthcare for all the United States of America citizens, it means
that every program, policies, projects and plans of healthcare must be subjected to HIA in order

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to offer quality services to the general public. ACMP regulates and control the usage of drugs in
the USA and most importantly controls the use of toxic drugs by the public. In order to do this, it
uses PHA which protects the public from harmful and hazardous chemicals in the environment.
Areas of risk management by HIA and PHA
Food and drug distribution; AMCP has come up with Food and Drug administration
agency that ensures that the public are protected at all levels as well as ensures that there is
compliance and safe healthcare is offered to every individual. This is also in line with HIA
provisions which requires every health institutions to perform an assessment of the proposed
plans, programs, projects and policies before it is implemented (McCallum, Ollson & Stefanovic,
2018). This involves all the projects in the food and drug sectors with the aim of protecting the
public from harmful chemical substances.
Compliance with various legal and ethical rules; HIA ids considered as a vital tool to
evaluate how a proposed and recommended decision will impact the health status of a population
and whether susceptible populations are likely to be affected. Thus, HIA ensures that every
health sector complies with the regulations and ethical rules so as to protect the vulnerable
members of the society.
Onsite contamination; PHA is used to evaluate contaminations from onsite manufacturing
industries (Agency for Toxic Substances And Disease Registry, 2018), thus, using PHA, AMCP
can use this tool to protect the public especially the workers from being affected by the
hazardous chemicals during manufacturing process.

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References
Agency for Toxic Substances And Disease Registry. (2018). Public health assessments.
Retrieved from https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hac/products/pha.html
Centers for disease control and prevention. (2016). Different types of health assessments.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/types_health_assessments.htm
Dannenberg, A. L., Bhatia, R., Cole, B. L., Dora, C., Fielding, J. E., Kraft, K., … Tilson, H. H.
(2006). Growing the Field of Health Impact Assessment in the United States: An Agenda
for Research and Practice. American Journal of Public Health, 96(2), 262–270.
https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2005.069880
McCallum, L. C., Ollson, C. A., & Stefanovic, I. L. (2018). An adaptable Health Impact
Assessment (HIA) framework for assessing health within Environmental Assessment
(EA): Canadian context, international application. Impact Assessment & Project
Appraisal, 36(1), 5–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2017.1364026
Mccallum, L. C., Souweine, K., Mcdaniel, M., Koppe, B., Mcfarland, C., Butler, K., & Ollson,
C. A. (2016). Health Impact Assessment of an oil drilling project in
California. International Journal of Occupational Medicine & Environmental
Health, 29(2), 229–253. https://doi.org/10.13075/ijomeh.1896.00551
Waheed, F., Ferguson, G. M., Ollson, C. A., MacLellan, J. I., McCallum, L. C., & Cole, D. C.
(2018). Health Impact Assessment of transportation projects, plans and policies: A
scoping review. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 71, 17–25.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2017.12.002