HEI Energy Special Project: Roadmap to Health: Assessing Adverse and Beneficial Environmental, Social, and Economic Cumulative Exposures
The health of people living in any community can be affected by a range of environmental, social, and economic factors. Cumulative impact assessment is a tool that can be used to assess cumulative exposures to these factors and their impacts on human health and well-being. These assessments have and continue to occur in the context of several national, state, and local regulatory decisions, but they hold promise for non-regulatory, educational, and research purposes. To contribute to ongoing efforts to advance the practice of cumulative impact assessment in the United States, HEI Energy formed a Special Panel on Cumulative Impact Assessment to inform a set of considerations for assessing cumulative that are outlined in a special report entitled: “Roadmap to Health: Assessing Adverse and Beneficial Environmental, Social, and Economic Cumulative Exposures” and accompanying checklist.
When designed such that they can be completed in a useful timeframe, cumulative impact assessments can help to reframe scientific and policy discussions so that they encompass the full spectrum of factors that can affect human health, and in so doing, position decision-makers to capitalize on beneficial impacts while avoiding adverse impacts. Together, the special report and checklist aim to facilitate taking the first steps toward realizing this goal. They provide a set of considerations that can be used by local and state decision-makers, nonregulatory actors such as industry and planning agencies, and other scientific and technical researchers to inform a cumulative impact assessment, alongside example contexts for how these considerations might be applied in real-world settings.
