Health Impact Assessments in India: Exploring a Possible Community Health Policy Innovation

India is now beginning to use Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) to better understand the health impacts of environmental projects. In this paper we analyze how Health Impact Assessments are executed in India and explore the feasibility of expanding the implementation and impacts of HIAs in India. Observations made in this paper regarding India's implementation of HIAs include: nongovernment organizations (NGOs) play a significant role in executing HIAs, powerful Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) context frames how HIAs are conducted, and, the need for more preventative HIA investigations that take a closer focus on "community health" issues.