Open Assesment

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Issue framing

Issue framing represents the first stage in doing an integrated environmental health impact assessment. It is at this stage that we specify clearly what question we are trying to address, and who should be involved in the assessment.

By the end of the issue-framing stage, therefore, we should have defined the scope of the assessment, and the principles on which it will be done. In the process, we should also have resolved any ambiguities in the terms and concepts we might be using, so that everyone involved has a common understanding of what the results of the assessment will mean.


Issue-framing can rarely be done as a singular, one-off process. Considerable reiteration if often required to deal with new insights, as they emerge. The order in which issue-framing is done also needs to be adapted according to circumstance. Five main steps, can, however, be recognized:


1. Specifying the question that needs to be addressed.

2. Identifying and engaging the key stakeholders who need to be involved.

3. Agreeing an overall approach to the assessment and the scenarios that will be used.

4. Selecting and constructing the scenarios on which the assessment will be based.

5. Defining the indicators that will be used to describe the impacts.


For the sorts of complex (systemic) problems that merit integrated environmental health impact assessment, issue framing can be extremely challenging (see link to Challenges in issue framing, left). Care and rigour in issue framing are therefore crucial if the assessment is to be valid and useful: failure to give the necessary attention at this stage will almost certainly undermine the value of everything that follows.