European Commission - Public Health: Dynamo-Hia

How much health can be gained by banning smoking in pubs? Or by increasing tax on alcohol? Scientific knowledge to answer such questions often exists, but in disparate sources. At the start of this project, no off-the-shelf, generally applicable tool was available to integrate this knowledge into a quantitative answer (see: Standard tool for quantification in health impact assessment: a review).

The DYNAMO-HIA project has developed and built an instrument to quantify the health impact of policies influencing health determinants. The instrument, a dynamic model called DYNAMO-HIA, is be generic (adaptable to the health determinants and outcomes relevant for the policy in question), applicable throughout the EU, and can be downloaded from this website.

As an illustration, the instrument will be used to estimate the health impact of achieving in all EU-countries the situation of the best performing country with regard to smoking, obesity and alcohol consumption.