User:Jukka Hirvonen

Homework 1

Question 1

Purpose of environmental health assessment is to provide information for policy making. This is done using information obtained from environmental health research and considering how environmental-health relationship is affected by different actions and decisions. Environmental health assessment quides and offers plans for decision making to achieve the ideal outcome.

Question 2

Pragmatism means that theory and practice are not separated or be seen as detached concept but instead of that they are seen compined subject which is strongly intertwined. For environmental health assessment this means that it through theory and to practice society's health and well being is improved.

Question 8

There can be many different purposes in participation regarding to environmental health assessment. Few main purposes for participation can be: influence assessment and their outputs, influence policy decisions and influencing policy making from outside the policy making structures. These are just few main purposes and in reality there often is many sub-purposes inside these. Different ways of participation are not often exclusive, but instead they interact with each other.

Homework 2

Question: I would like to know more about Training costs, and how do you define different cost variables in an assessment. Is there some basic values/numbers for different variables that can be used if there is no specific information about some variables? Is there some advices how costs should be divived betweem differet variables when doing environmental health assessment.

Homework 3

Done with Sami Rissanen in his user page: http://en.opasnet.org/w/User:Sami_Rissanen

Homework 4

The Helsinki Metropolitan Area Climate Change Adaptation Strategy Material link:http://www.hsy.fi/tietoahsy/Documents/Julkaisut/11_2012_Helsinki_Metropolitan_Area_Climate_Change_Adaptation_Strategy.pdf

Q: What are the aims/goals of the strategy/program, i.e. what are the desired impacts and outcomes striven for?

A: Strategy concentrates on the adaptation of the built and urban environment to the changing climate. The vision is climate proof city.

The strategy aims to

1) assess the impacts of climate change in the area,

2) prepare for the impacts of climate change and to extreme weather events and

3) to reduce the vulnerabilities of the area to climate variability and change.

Q: Who are those that benefit if the aims/goals of the strategy/program are reached? How?

A: Citizens, because the target is to secure well-being.

Q: What are the actions that are needed/intended to take in order to progress towards the aims/goals?

A:

Q: Who are those that actually realize these actions?

Q: What are the decisions that are needed to make in order to enable/promote the actions?

Q: Who are the decision makers?

A:Cities (city planning, technical services, environment centre) Forestry Development Centre Tapio Uudenmaan liitto

Q:What direct or indirect health impacts, positive or negative, these decisions and actions (may) have?

A: The intended decisions and actions are divided in different categories based on different sectors in society and every area has own planned adaptation policy, so also the health impacts are assessed to each sector as individual. Also each sector may have more than one action options and then health impacts are assessed to all different options. Only such options are mentioned in this homework where health impacts are assessed. Most impacts are direct but there is some indirect effects also (t.ex guidances that improves public health in future aspect)

-Land use.

Action option 2. Secure collective green areas. Green and natural areas have positive effects to peoples living environment and in studies it is showed that it affects positively to mental and physical well being. Natural areas can also increase opportunities for exercise and so they support positive health impacts associated to exercise.

-Traffic and technical networks.

Action option 1. Public transport adaptation plan. By supporting public transport and light transportation, exercises positive impacts on health are supported. Adaptation plan also advances traffic safety and can decrease accident risks in exceptional situations. It also can decrease injury risks from people who use light- or public trasportation.

Action option 2. Readiness plan: risks for traffic- and technical networks. By ensuring electric- and data networks reliability hospitals performance is secured and well working traffic network increases ambulance services performance.

-Building and climate proof local environment.

Action option 1. Building hights. For future aspect this option can reduce negative health effects attributed to buildings humidity and indoor air quality problems.

-Water and waste management.

For overall health impacts that this sector decisions can have, it is mentioned that floods and defunctioning waste water treatment exposes to diseases that travel in sewer's waste waters.

-Rescue services and safety.

Action option 1. Readiness plan. Successful risk management is advances controlling and reducing negative health impacts from climate change in municipal healthcare. Examples from such negative impacts are exceptional warm decades, changes in amount of pollen and algae and diseases that can infect by animals or entrantspecies becoming more common. Also readiness plan decreases possible stress in healthcare system when exceptional situations are faced.

Action option 2. Safety situation centers. Ensuring enough resources to rescue work and healtcare system improves ability to prevent negative health impacts arising from exceptional situations.

Action option 3. Leading- and readiness rehearsals. Leading and readiness rehearsals improve rescue works ability to prevent negative health impacts associated to exceptional situations caused by extreme events.

Action option 4. Citizens self-prepare. Instructions for self-preparing to exceptional situations can improve citizens safety and health and it decreases the stress that extreme events cause to rescue work.

-Health care and social services.

Action option 1. Readiness plan. Better preparing increases patientsafety t.ex. through properly allocated resources and considering the risks can help to predict possibly disease cases.

Action option 2. Recognizing vulnerable groups. Patient safety is improved when vulnerable groups are recognized and taken into consideration when allocating and defining resources. If needed, extra precautions are allocated to recognized groups.

Action option 3. Urban survival -scheme. Urban survival scheme can at it's best can help to reduce stress carecenters and rescue work. Scheme can advance national health and it can decrease number of disease cases if it includes guidance for these subjects.

-Co-operation in the production and distribution of information.

Action option 1. Network for distributing information. Creating network for information distribution can improve research attributed to national health and arising of new information.

Action option 2 & 3. International survey for good policies & national co-operation networks. If survey includes mapping of actions related to national health, this action option can improve national health work related to climate change and it's impacts.

Q:Where and how do these impacts take place, who are those that face these health impacts in practice?

A: In this climate change adaptation strategy the assessed health impacts take mostly place in capital city region. In practise every citizen in that region faces these health impacts. Also people who work in city area face these impacts (t.ex. prevented indoor air quality problems in offices etc. buildings.) These health impacts also reflect to health care system, rescue work and ambulance services if need for their services is increased. People in city planning and decision making also face these impacts so, that they might need to improve preparement and actions to prevent negative health impacts associated to climate change. As how impacts take place: t.ex. new structure building planning, increased resources to healthcare system and rescue work, new city planning to green and natural areas and communicational and traffic networks, new waste and waste water management planning all produces these intended positive health impacts.

Q:Are the health impacts big or small in relation to other impacts (e.g. economical, social, climate, other environmental, ...)?

A: Health impacts are at least moderate or even large related to most other impacts. Sometimes social impacts or economical impacts seem to be assessed as remarkable as health impacts. Also other environmental impacts, such affecting to land use, structure building planning and traffic/communicational networks are seen big impacts also. In overall, it seems that health impacts are seen most concerning impact group related to others in assessment, so health impacts can be seen big.

Q:Do the intended policies result in win-win, win-lose, lose-win, or lose-lose situations with regard to health and other impacts?

A: In assessment it seems that all the action options are considered so, that there will be very minor nor any negative health impacts. So it seems to be allways win-x situation regarding to health vs. other impacts. Mostly there seems to be win-win situation but sometimes, t.ex. there is temporary negative social impacts in specific are from construction work, such as noise and emissions, negative economical impacts as rising costs or negative environmental impacts such as increased GHG emissions. So sometimes there is win-lose situations too. In some options there is both negative and positive options so then you could say that result is win-"balanced".

Formulate a plausible and meaningful specific assessment question that takes account of (some of) the aspects considered in above questions.

A: How could we find the most cost efficient way to execute these actions and should there be some kind of classification system for each impact and their magnitude, or is every impact seen equal regarding it's magnitude.

Extra question: In what ways your answers do or do not represent "shared understanding"? (The climate program/strategy can be considered a compilation of contributions by many experts and attempting to reflect the views and needs of different decision makers and stakeholders)

A: I think that answers do not represent real shared understanding. They represent the suggestions, needs and opinions from experts and capital city area decision makers. Citizens and companies living and working in capital city area are not directly included in decision making. There also seems to be many different action options, so maybe shared understanding is not very clear even among experts and city area decision makers.

Homework 5

part A: Questions about identifying roles and participation: Q:Who are the relevant participants of the assessment?

A: Relevant participants are the ones having authority to make action plans and decisions. These are: the Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority (HSY), which is coordinating strategy preparation. Other participants are Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen cities and their experts, regional emergency services, Ministry of Environment and Helsinki Transport Authority. Also some smaller regional organizations are included.

Q:What roles the different participants (may) take in the assessment? Q:What kind of relevant knowledge they (may) have regarding the assessment? Q:What needs and aims do they represent in the assessment?

Homework 5

part B: Consider also the following questions about facilitating collaboration:

How could the relevant participants be involved in the assessment in an effective way? How can the quality of an assessment be assured if anyone can participate? How can you prevent malevolent contributions where the purpose is to vandalise the process? How can you make the outcome converge to a conclusion, because all issues are uncertain and controversial? How can you ensure that the outcomes are useful for the users?

Homework 5

part C: Prepare following tables from the climate programme of your selection. Instructions for table structures can be found at Training assessment.

Decisions table Endpoints table