EL PASO—The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) will be leading the development of a health impact assessment (HIA) program for the border region. It’s a tool to look at the potential health impacts of proposed infrastructure improvements or policy changes. UTEP’s program will focus on water, sanitation, and public transportation.
UTEP received a grant of $250,000 from the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts based in Washington, DC, to develop the program.
The new project has three components:
1) HIA training for students at UTEP and NMSU;
2) an HIA focused on plans to extend public transportation from Las Cruces to the communities of Sunland Park, Santa Teresa, Anthony, and Chaparral, NM; and
3) development and pilot testing of a model for assessing health impacts of water and sanitation in border communities using the case of the colonia Las Palmas, near Presidio, TX.
The colonia Las Palmas currently relies on hauled water from the City of Presidio. The HIA in southern New Mexico will evaluate the impacts of public transportation on access to health care, jobs, and education, for low income residents.
“Healthy environments contribute to healthy people, and clean water and proper waste management are fundamental to good public health,” said Dr. Bill Hargrove, Director of the Center for Environmental Resource Management (CERM) at UTEP.
“The health of residents in communities with few transportation options can be dramatically improved when public transportation becomes available. The HIA will enable us to measure that impact,” said Sharon Thomas, Chair of the South Central Regional Transit Citizen Committee and former Mayor Pro Tem of the City of Las Cruces.
The HIA program development project will be led by CERM. Students from UTEP and NMSU will participate in the field research activities and also learn how to conduct HIAs.
The Health Impact Project, which awarded the grant to UTEP, is dedicated to promoting the use of health impact assessments in the United States. More information, including a searchable map of HIA activity in the United States, is available at www.healthimpactproject.org.
Information from UTEP