Drawing from the well of community participation: an evaluation of the utility of local knowledge in the health impact assessment process

Engagement with local residents is increasingly being used as a source of evidence for making health impact assessment (HIA) predictions. However, there have been criticisms about the community engagement process and the value of evidence derived from it. This study aims to investigate the constraints of engagement and to gage the usefulness of local knowledge to the HIA evidence base. Questionnaire responses were collected from 52 HIA practitioners in the United Kingdom, and interviews were conducted with 11 practitioners (8 of whom also completed the survey). Forty-two of the 52 respondents (81%) had undertaken engagement with local residents, and the techniques used for community engagement were focus groups (76%), workshops (52%), questionnaire surveys (43%), interviews (41%), and other less common approaches (14%). Interestingly, while more than one-third of the practitioners found engagement difficult, nearly all of them rated local knowledge to be a useful or very useful source of evidence. It is vital, therefore, to understand ways of minimizing the constraints encountered in the community engagement process in order to fully tap into local knowledge and strengthen the evidence base of the HIA process.