A Model for Health Impact Assessment of the Developmental Plans in Iran

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a tool to aid decisionmakers to predict positive and negative impacts of the proposed policies, programs and projects on health. Environmental impact assessment is routinely carried out in Iran. The Fifth Development Plan of Iran has necessitated the health system to conduct HIA of major developmental plans. A conceptual framework has been proposed previously for HIA in Iran. This study was carried out to confirm the framework using the factor analysis.We used the confirmatory factor analysis to testthe construct validity of thefactors, and structural equation modeling to test the relationships between the factors. The confirmatory factor analysis and the structural equation modeling showed the significance of the relationships between the factors in framework. Model fitness, i.e. RMSEA, was 0.043 and 0.024 in the primary and modified models, respectively. GFI and NNFI were 0.85 and 0.82 in the primary model and 0.94 and 0.93 in the modified model, respectively.Based on the confirmed framework in this study, it is necessary to make decision about integrating HIAwith environmental impact assessment and conducting HIAin programs and policies and also redefining HIA principles before implementing the policy in the system.