Screening policies for health impact assessment : cluster analysis for easier decision making

© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association. All rights reserved.Background: Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a combination of procedures, methods and tools by which a policy may be judged as to its potential effects and its distribution on a population’s health. Screening policies to identify candidates for applying HIA is an essential first step, generally qualitative. Our aim is to show how to use exploratory multivariate statistical methods such as cluster analysis to screen through policies and pinpoint priorities for HIA quickly and reliably. Methods: A panel of 7 public health experts from Nova University in 2011 rated 76 policies proposed by a Technical Group planning the Portuguese hospital reform on a 10-point scale (1-Very low to 10-Very high) regarding Potential Impact, Ease of implementation and Implementation costs. Hierarchical cluster analysis is used to identify groups of similar policies and prioritize those more pertinent of being considered for HIA.