Analysing the value, benefits and barriers to stakeholder and community participation in health impact assessments (HIAs) in Wales from 2005 to 2020

Health Impact Assessments (HIA) are undertaken to inform decision-making processes by assessing the potential health and health equity impacts of a programme, policy, or project and developing appropriate responses to mitigate harms and maximize benefits. Stakeholder and community participation is central to the impact assessment process. This research explores the experiences of stakeholders and community members who participated in HIA workshops in Wales between 2005 and 2020. Data were gathered through a questionnaire at the end of each HIA workshop session with stakeholder and community participants from diverse backgrounds reporting on the experience of their participation. The analysis reveals a range of perceived benefits of participation in the HIA process. The identified benefits included the opportunity to be heard, networking, and a view of participation as a community service. These findings reinforce the importance of stakeholder and community participation in HIA, through the perspective of participants themselves. This study contributes to the understanding of community and stakeholder participation in impact assessment processes and offers recommendations for improving the practice and impact of HIA in policy development. These findings have the potential to be transferable to other types of impact assessments, and other forms of community and stakeholder participation. • Participation in HIA workshops benefits participants through learning and collaboration. • HIA workshops can facilitate conceptual, technical, social, and transformative learning. • HIA workshops unite perspectives, challenge beliefs and foster knowledge and solutions. • Workshops can enable the identification of unintended impacts of a proposal or plan. • The study highlights potential motivations for participating in HIA workshops.