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Developments at all levels between project and policy have a potential impact on human health. Health‐impact assessment (HIA) is a discipline that seeks to assess these impacts to safeguard and enhance human health. There is a growing consensus about the scope, methodology and context for HIA but there are also many unresolved issues. This paper reviews the main trends as they vary between the healthy public policy, environmental assessment and environmental epidemiology communities; and between retrospective and prospective, developed and developing economies and urban/industrial versus rural settings. There are unresolved issues associated with the nature of evidence, the link with economic appraisal, and with the core biophysical and social health determinants. The nature of the evidence used is examined and some resolutions are proposed. The growing number of guidelines testify to a demand by development agencies for HIA, but increased consensus is required to ensure that quality assessments are delivered.

This paper aims to practically guide privacy impact assessment (PIA) implementation by proposing a PIA process incorporating best practices from existing PIA guidelines and privacy research.

This paper critically reviews and assesses generic PIA methods proposed by related research, data protection authorities and standard’s organizations, to identify best practices and practically support PIA practitioners. To address identified gaps, best practices from privacy literature are proposed.

This paper proposes a PIA process based on best practices, as well as an evaluation framework for existing PIA guidelines, focusing on practical support to PIA practitioners.

The proposed PIA process facilitates PIA practitioners in organizing and implementing PIA projects. This paper also provides an evaluation framework, comprising a comprehensive set of 17 criteria, for PIA practitioners to assess whether PIA methods/guidelines can adequately support requirements of their PIA projects (e.g. special legal framework and needs for PIA project organization guidance).

This research extends PIA guidelines (e.g. ISO 29134) by providing comprehensive and practical guidance to PIA practitioners. The proposed PIA process is based on best practices identified from evaluation of nine commonly used PIA methods, enriched with guidelines from privacy literature, to accommodate gaps and support tasks that were found to be inadequately described or lacking practical guidance.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.

An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.

Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.

The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.

This paper sets out to assess and analyses the key pillars of the SEA framework in Kenya, highlighting aspects that should be considered for further scrutiny and review, aiming at evolving a suitable context‐specific Kenyan SEA.

Content analysis of the SEA framework was done through desktop research. This was supplemented by a two‐month internship at the National Environmental Management Authority in Kenya. The key documents prescribing and describing SEA in Kenya (legal documents, guidelines) formed a basis for interpretative analysis. International literature on SEA frameworks also formed a basis for analysis.

Although the SEA framework is relatively complete, there are certain elements that are incomplete, e.g. environmental and sustainability standards have not been formally established. Some provisions are unclear or reveal internal incoherency within the framework. For example, the definitions of policies, plans, programmes and projects are not clearly differentiated for the purpose of the SEA framework. The framework is premised on “an early SEA” yet the key exercises of public participation and the triggering of the SEA exercise are both carried out late. There is need for SEA‐EIA tiering and SEA definitions and purposes to be harmonized within the various documents of the framework. Sector‐level SEA guidelines offer the most appropriate opportunity to address most of the substantive shortcomings of the framework.

The results provide a baseline for departure towards further scrutiny and research in order to evolve a more homegrown SEA, as opposed to merely copyng what other countries have done. The highlighted areas are expounded on, with some suggestions given; in some instances no clear remedy is immediately obvious.

The paper is a seminal instigator of interest into the Kenyan SEA framework, which is still very young and devoid of experience and tradition. It brings to light and questions some key issues that seem to have the potential to reduce the benefits and instrumentality of the SEA tool in meeting Kenya's interest.

This research explores the relevance of the Austrian tradition within the field of public policy studies. Policy studies is a research field about what governments can do. Austrian economics, conversely, mostly highlights the shortfalls of government intervention: as such overlapping seems limited. However, broadly speaking Austrian principles have indirectly influenced two aspects of policy studies: the conceptualization of the policy cycle as an imperfect process driven by actual individuals with limited knowledge and bounded rationality, and the creation of a regulatory framework that forces policy makers to reflect upon unintended consequences, by using evidence and data. This regulatory framework, assessed in this chapter by reading several regulatory guidelines through Austrian lenses, provides a new window of opportunities for Austrian economics to be relevant in the policy process. Austrian economist can be taking part in the regulatory process and also help select regulatory tools and institutional infrastructures that minimize the unintended consequences of government intervention, while contributing to the definition of social problems that enter the policy agenda from an individualistic perspective.

Despite the prevalence of academic literature debating and proposing competing conceptions of social value creation through socially driven enterprises, there is a lack of empirical studies on established impact measurement methodologies in the context of real-world ventures. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a structured process of conducting social impact assessments (SIAs) through the real-world case of Richmond, Virginia Works Enterprise Support (RVA Works), a social enterprise in Richmond, Virginia, that provides educational programming on small business ownership to minorities and lower-income individuals.

This qualitative research study incorporates an in-depth case study methodology. Evidence was collected through interpretive/qualitative interviews and direct observations by the researchers.

Using the example of RVA Works, the authors show that there is a lack of standardization and guidance for social entrepreneurs in choosing methods to assess their organizational performance, and that leading conceptions of social impact continue to face key weaknesses in their methodologies.

By incorporating a qualitative case study approach, the authors present a real-world study of a social enterprise – specifically a microenterprise development organization – that may serve as a valuable example to social entrepreneurs and not-for-profit leaders facing similar challenges of social value creation and impact measurement.

In studying the experience of conducting SIAs by social enterprises, the authors illustrate the real-world challenges faced by entrepreneurs in applying theoretical conceptions of social value to the outcomes of their ventures, thus illustrating a need for additional clarity and discussion around a more comprehensive, standardized and broadly applicable measurement approach.

Governance of healthcare organisations and health systems requires many different competencies, with a great emphasis on evidence and information governance, which are traditional fields of librarians’ expertise. However, stakeholders are unaware of how health and hospital libraries are contributing with specific activities and what are the trends in library support for health/clinical governance in Europe, mainly because traditional methods of measuring impact are restricted to specific library activities or are not showing direct impact long term. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A model combining components of clinical and health governance (C/HG), related library activity types, and the possible impact was developed based on a literature review and tested by a European expert panel. A web-based survey was offered to the members of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL) to offer further insight into activities and examples of contribution to C/HG.

Librarians from 25 European countries participated in the survey. The model proves that librarians in Europe are involved in supporting most identified components of C/HG, with examples of clinical effectiveness and research, education and training, patient and public involvement, partnership engagement, formulating strategic direction, etc.

The authors were unable to cover the roles of libraries in all European countries in this paper, but dialogue and research will continue within the EAHIL group.

No such comparative research has been undertaken before, looking at what activities and tasks libraries undertake to support C/HG. This research has highlighted valuable services and tools that can be replicated in libraries across health care organisations and at the same time promote libraries and librarians as significant actors in organisational governance.

Recent developments in additive manufacturing (AM) technology have emphasized the issue of social impacts. However, such effects are still to be determined. So, the purpose of this paper is to map the social impacts of AM technology.

The methodological approach applied in this study combines a literature review with computer-aided content analysis to search for keywords related to social impacts. The content analysis technique was used to identify and count the relevant keywords in academic documents associated with AM social impacts.

The study found that AM technology social impacts are still in an exploratory phase. Evidence was found that several social challenges of AM technology will have an influence on the society. The topics associated with fabrication, customization, sustainability, business models and work emerged as the most relevant terms that can act as “pointers” to social impacts.

The research on this subject is strongly conditioned by the scarcity of empirical experience and, consequently, by the scarcity of data and publications on the topic.

This study gives an up-to-date contribution to the topic of AM social impacts, which is still little explored in the literature. Moreover, the methodological approach used in this work combines bibliometrics with computer-aided content analysis, which also constitutes a contribution to support future literature reviews in any field. Overall, the results can be used to improve academic research in the topic and promote discussion among the different social actors.

The rapid deterioration of the earth’s natural ecosystems are increasing the risk of human morbidity and mortality worldwide. Hydrometeorological hazards are concentrating contaminants from the damaged environment and exposing large vulnerable populations to life threating illnesses and death. This study performed a retrospective health risk assessment on two recent events where such impacts unfolded, namely, the 2015 south east Equatorial Asia smoke haze disaster and the 2016 Melbourne thunderstorm asthma epidemic. The purpose of this paper is to test if the characterisation of health risk warranted earlier and more effective risk reduction activities prior to the disasters occurring.

A retrospective health risk characterisation assessment was performed combing United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Health Aspect in Disaster Risk Assessment (2017) framework with a thematic and targeted word literature review to identify the level of risk knowledge prior to each event. A risk characterisation matrix was then created to characterise the health risk of each hazard event.

The 2015 south east Equatorial Asia smoke haze disaster risk assessment was characterised as “extreme” health risk and the 2016 Melbourne thunderstorm asthma epidemic was characterised as “high” health risk.

Reaching the goals of the Sendai Framework require strategies and plans which urgently address the catastrophic level of mortality risk posed by exposure to environmental contaminants.

Innovative approaches and partnerships are necessary to mitigate the risk from the deteriorating health of the environment and natural ecosystems, along with disaster response initiatives that reduce exposure of vulnerable people on a large scale.