Box A7.1: Assessment of health effects within the SEA of the Czech Operational Programme for 2007-2013 for “Enterprise and Innovation” [5]

Selected health determinants:

• Environmental factors: Air quality, noise and toxic substances in the environment
• Socio-economic factors: Employment and education
• Social and community networks/influences: None
• Living and working conditions: Safety of commonly-used products and of construction materials
• Individual lifestyle factors: Healthy ways of spending leisure time (e.g. agro-tourism, bicycle riding, etc.).

The specific tasks performed by the SEA team included:

• Clarification of why health matters were addressed within this SEA instead of being assessed separately
• Carrying out a brief overview of the state of health in the Czech Republic
• Carrying out an overview of the main methodological issues in analyzing impacts of policies, plans and programmes on health, including explanation of the need to analyze health impacts that are caused both by changes in the state of the environment as well as by socio-economic factors
• Explanation of the chosen approaches for assessing the impacts of the programme on health, combined with an overview of health-related policies, plans and programmes that were relevant to this Operational Programme
• Assessment of the actual health effects, primarily through: (a) the SEA team outlining the possible direct effects (positive and negative) of individual interventions proposed in this programme; and (b) the SEA team determining those interventions pursued by the programme that might have positive or negative impacts on relevant health determinants
• Making proposals for implementation of this programme including: (a) criteria or conditions for selection of future projects that would be promoted by this programme (including environmental and other conditions); and (b) proposed indicators to monitor effects on health
• Drawing overall conclusions

These assessments were done on the basis of collective expert judgement by recognized health experts in the Czech Republic (from the National Health Institute), reviewed by the rest of the SEA team.