It has been a busy year. Since our last project update at the end of 2011, we have published three updated versions of existing publications, an update to our document on the Interprovincial Meeting on HIA, as well as three new publications on citizen participation in HIA. You can find all of these in the HIA publications section.

Much of our focus in 2012 was on the creation of the online course in HIA, in English and in French, produced in collaboration with Dr. Richard Massé (now the Directeur de santé publique, or medical officer of health, for the Montréal region), the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, the University of Montréal, and other partners.  To find out more about the course, click here.

Please note that there has been a great deal of interest in and demand for this course. We are developing ways to make it available to more participants during 2013 and will keep you posted. To register to receive news about the course, please sign up for updates here (click the box for "HIA online course").

For the year 2013, the online course will continue to be a main focus

Also from 2012, we are proud to have participated in the 12th international conference on HIA in Québec City, hosted by Québec's Ministry of Health and Social Services. It was the first time this conference was held in North America, which allowed more Canadians interested in this practice to meet with international experts in the field. The conference attracted nearly 400 participants from 42 different countries. In addition to being actively involved in organizing the conference, the Centre also organized:

• a preconference workshop (in French and in English) to introduce HIA to participants who are new to the practice, 
• a workshop session on HIA practice in Aboriginal contexts in Canada, and
• a workshop with provincial public health authorities and the Public Health Agency of Canada to share governments' HIA experiences at the provincial and federal levels.

To consult the PowerPoint presentations from our workshops, click here. In addition, there are numerous videos and presentations available on the HIA 2012 website.

In order to maximize the positive effects of the international conference in Canada, the Centre plans to edit, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Social Services, a report on the key messages drawn from this meeting. This report will be accompanied by a DVD of the numerous videos recorded during the conference in which experts were interviewed for the occasion.

Taking into account the provincial and federal governments' continuing interest in HIA, the Centre will organize for the Canadian Public Health Agency a second edition of an interprovincial meeting. We also plan to follow up on the HIA series with two additional fact sheets.

Finally, a publication on the practice and the challenges for Integrated Impact Assessment is in in production.

We will keep you posted as to what's new via the Centre's e-Bulletin or via our HIA mail list. Please send us a note to share your ideas or feedback with us.


Photo: Zest-pk. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zest-pk/923930667/