HIA in the News: “University at Buffalo Planner Samina Raja Earns National Recognition for Healthy Communities Research”
June 11, 2010
Patricia Donovan, The State University of New York at Buffalo
"Samina Raja, PhD, associate professor of urban and regional planning in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, is a community-based scholar whose work continues to earn national visibility and prestige in the fields of food security planning and community health.
She is the only urban or regional planner appointed to a committee of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) that has been charged with developing a framework and guidance for health impact assessments (HIAs) in the United States, and she recently received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to build on her prior research on community food systems in Buffalo.
The NAS committee, sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the California Endowment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is developing a systematic, conceptual framework and approach for improving the assessment of health impacts in the United States.
The group, expected to release its findings in early 2011, will report on the value and potential value of HIAs; impediments and countervailing factors that have limited their practice to date; circumstances, criteria, concepts, tools and information required for conducting the assessments; and the types, structure and content of HIAs..."
