ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that adequately predicting environmental health impacts depends upon a number of necessary preconditions. Assessing environmental health impacts, then, is a special instance of change analysis. The practice of predicting environmental health impacts increasingly has turned to the use of qualitative data collection and analysis techniques, as local community opposition to proposed developments has persisted despite findings based on social indicator research that nothing is 'wrong', or that adverse changes are likely to be insignificant. The underlying premise of this chapter is that adequately predicting environmental health impacts depends upon a number of necessary preconditions. Dealing with dynamic pressures and systemic root causes of vulnerability, however, frequently is beyond the health institutions' territory, and requires collaboration between health institutions, government agencies and non-government organizations who necessarily regard environmental health risks as within their province. A key facet of problem structuring, then, is to make sure that locally relevant pathways are included in the data collection and analysis plan.
