Health Impact Assessment (HIA): analyses and challenges to Brazilian Health Surveillance

Abstract This study aims to discuss the Health Impact Assessment (HIA), pointing out the main initiatives of the health sector, challenges and perspectives for its implementation in Brazil. HIA is a methodology recommended by the WHO and is widely used in several countries, but with few initiatives in Brazil. Health issues in the context of large projects are commonly conducted on a timely basis within the environmental licensing processes, unlike HIA, which proposes an integrated approach, with the involvement of social stakeholders in the territory since the beginning of the project. This is an analytical and exploratory research and, thus, a systematic review on the subject was carried out, as well as a survey of government documents on the main initiatives already conducted by the Ministry of Health within Environmental Health Surveillance in the environmental licensing processes of large projects. We sought to analyze the main conceptual frameworks, pointing out possibilities for their implementation in Brazil, as well as new perspectives for Health Surveillance in this area, allowing the health variable to be evaluated during several interventions of a policy, program or project.