The purposes of this research were to study the knowledge, understanding and their affecting factors of Health Impact Assessment (HIA) manual of consultant firms, and to find out problems and obstacles, in order to recommend guidelines for the consultant firms to act upon the HIA manual. A questionnaire was employed to collect data from 50 consultant firms registered with the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP). The descriptive statistics, i.e., percentage, mean, and standard deviation were applied to analyze the data whereas; the t–test, F–test, and Correlation were applied for inferential statistic test. The results revealed that the majority of the consultant firms (57.14%) had moderate knowledge and level of understanding of HIA manual. In addition, the studied factors, i.e., firm size, numbers of public health experts, numbers of received information, numbers of sources of received information, numbers of project categories studied by consultant firms, participation in HIA activities, including policy of the firms, the status of being Public Health Association member, attentions in HIA, and opinion to act upon the HIA manual was not significantly related to the knowledge and understanding of the manual. From the study, the ONEP should be advised to give more information to the consultant firms through its homepage. Moreover, the authority should offer more training courses in HIA, improve for a clear and compact HIA manual, and separate the manual into individual projects. Simultaneously, public health database should be collected for HIA, along with the arrangement of pilot projects in several categories of projects under the authority’s duty, whilst HIA courses should be increased and introduced in universities.
Keywords: assessment, consultant firm, environment, guideline, health and manual
Corresponding author: E-mail: tawatc.s@nida.nida.ac.th
Suppadit*, T. ., Boonsit, K. ., & Poungsuk, P. . (2007). FACTORS AFFECTING THE KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT MANUAL OF CONSULTANT FIRMS IN THAILAND FOR PRACTICAL CHANNEL. CURRENT APPLIED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 49-56.
