Human Impact Partners

I-710 Corridor Project

Interstate 710 is a vital transportation artery that links the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to the Southern California region and beyond. An Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement on a proposed expansion of the freeway is being prepared by Caltrans and their partners.  At the request of the communities near the I-710, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Gateway Cities Council of Governments oversaw the conduct of an HIA, led and completed by HIP with input from many stakeholders.  This is the largest transportation project on which an HIA has been completed in the United States.   The HIA was submitted to Caltrans, which is now considering whether/how to incorporate it into the draft EIR/EIS.  The full scope of the HIA is available here. The HIA will be released after the DEIR/DEIS is released in the spring of 2012.

Lake Merritt BART Station Specific Plan

Public Health Law and Policy (PHLP) contracted with HIP to conduct a HIA on the Lake Merritt BART Specific Area Plan in Oakland, CA, in collaboration with PHLP, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, TransForm, and Asian Health Services. PHLP was funded by the Federal Transportation Administration to develop a toolkit to help policy makers incorporate health in transportation planning, and the HIA is a central component of the toolkit. The HIA will build on relationships developed during the community engagement and Existing Conditions Report comment letter process.  To date, HIP and partners have held a number of scoping meetings to identify potential indicators for analysis in the HIA.

Mountain View General Plan Update

Human Impact Partners is working with the City of Mountain View, CA and the planning firm MIG to analyze the health impacts of alternatives being considered as part of the city's General Plan Update and integrate health-promoting policies throughout the General Plan.

Paid Family Leave

Working with the Labor Project for Working Families, Human Impact Partners is conducting a rapid health analysis of the impacts of paid family leave, including leave for oneself (e.g., for chronic health conditions), family members, and childbirth and bonding.  Several bills being considered in the 2011 California legislature propose changes to paid family leave.  HIP’s research will be used to inform legislators of the potential health impact of these bills.

Port Container Fee

Human Impact Partners is working with groups in Northern and Southern California as well as State Senator Lowenthal’s office to explore the health impacts of a bill that would assess a fee on each container moving through the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland to fund air quality and traffic congestion mitigations. The HIA is examining various types of projects that could be funded by port container fee revenues. These projects include grade-separation (creating tunnels or bridges so that cars don’t have to wait for passing trains); freeway expansion; train improvements (e.g., electrification of trains, retrofitting old diesel train engines, alternative train technologies); and heavy-duty truck retrofit/replacement.

Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach

Region 9 of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has asked the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA to incorporate HIA into Environmental Impact Assessment processes on proposed expansion projects in order to  comprehensively analyze potential health impacts and to inform mitigation options. With the goals of increasing understanding of and support for the concept of conducting HIA as part of the EIS/EIR process, the EPA offered to develop a model of a HIA Scope with public input. The EPA contracted with Human Impact Partners to develop this HIA scope and the process included a public meeting to bring stakeholders together for input in February 2010. The scope is now publicly available on the EPA website by clicking here, and HIP and the EPA are taking comments on it. The EPA hosted a call in early September to discuss the scope and potential next steps with stakeholders, with the goal of encouraging HIAs on future port plans and projects. Funding may become available to support a full-scale HIA as well as its recommended mitigations. To read the full report, click here.

Port of Oakland

A class on Health Impact Assessment at University of California, Berkeley conducted a HIA on the Port of Oakland, CA as a case study. HIP connected the students to community residents and other stakeholders in West Oakland. The class’ instructors released a draft of the HIA in April 2010 and stakeholders are currently reviewing the draft HIA.

School Discipline Policies

Human Impact Partners is currently working on a HIA of school discipline policies. What started out as an HIA of zero tolerance policies in schools (suspending or expelling students for any infraction) has broadened to also include other school discipline policies such as restorative justice policies and positive behavioral intervention and support. The draft HIA scope includes analyzing how these policies impact those being disciplined, other students, and communities through pathways to health outcomes from educational attainment (e.g., dropout rates), incarceration, violence, drug abuse, mental health, and family/community cohesion. HIP was recently awarded a grant from The California Endowment to conduct this HIA in partnership with local organizations in Los Angeles, Oakland, and Salinas. HIP has also established a national steering committee to support this HIA.

Sustainable  Communities Strategy – SB375

With funding from the Resources Legacy Fund, Human Impact Partners is collaborating with a statewide collection of public health experts, departments, and advocates as well as planning agencies and firms to have health and equity metrics incorporated into Regional Transportation Planning (RTP) processes conducted by Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) in California.  Senate Bill 375 (2008) requires that MPOs prepare a Sustainable Communities Strategy as a new element of their RTPs. MPOs typically select a set of indicators to use as criteria for judging potential scenarios under consideration.  It is our hope that the use of health-and equity-based metrics to judge future scenarios will lead to the selection transportation plans that have better health and equity outcomes.  With our partners, we have identified priority indicators that monitor health determinants such as vehicle miles traveled, emissions, access to goods and services, as well as actual health outcomes such as injuries from vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle collisions.  Once health and equity indicators are prioritized, HIP will be engaging with partners to disseminate to MPOs the indicators, methods for measuring them, and health evidence that supports them.  Check back for prioritized health and equity metrics recommendations for all of California’s MPOs.  We have also provided a health and equity based critique of metrics proposed by others. To see the sign on letter, click here and for a health and equity analysis of SCAG’s performance measures, click here.

For the final version of the Health and Equity Metrics for Metropolitan Planning Organizations to consider in their Sustainable Communities Strategy/Regional Transportation process, click here. For a one-page summery, click here.