Community Health & Safety
SHAPE is a recognised leader in community health and safety for the natural resources and extractive sector, with extensive experience conducting health impact assessments through hands-on techniques and methods.
SHAPE’s approach is designed to comply with local regulatory requirements, international lender requirements, internal company standards and good international industry practice. We have experience following a wide range of standards, including development-finance standards that often default to the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards on social and environmental sustainability (Performance Standard 4: community health, safety and security) and the Equator Principles, as well as industry standards such as those of the International Council on Mining and Metals, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, and — for oil and gas — the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association.
Health impact assessments
Health impact assessments across project life-cycles and at the appropriate level, so outputs can be used as a decision-making tool to avoid or mitigate risks — from scoping-level studies that identify key potential health impacts and data gaps, through rapid appraisal approaches, to comprehensive assessments where the scale of the project and complexity of the community receptor require it.
Baseline health studies
Desktop research and appraisal, participatory appraisal through qualitative means, review of secondary data, and — where needed — cross-sectional epidemiological surveys collecting primary qualitative and quantitative (including biomedical) data. SHAPE often integrates with other studies (socio-economic, resettlement, vulnerability) to reduce survey fatigue and support an economy of scale.
Community health and safety management and monitoring plans
Extending from the impact assessment, framework management and monitoring plans that address priority impacts and evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation measures.
Health management plans
Specific plans that may be required from the community health and safety management plans — for example malaria and vector control, communicable disease management, and workplace medical services and emergency response.
Mitigation measures
Practical, context-specific avoidance and mitigation measures linked to specific impacts and their associated factors, following a standard bow-tie risk assessment methodology aligned to the hierarchy of controls.
Peer review and due diligence
Independent review of health impact assessments or community health and safety management plans submitted as part of regulatory or lender compliance.
Stakeholder engagement
Engagement with internal company resources and external community or government stakeholders, integral to every health impact assessment.
Monitoring and evaluation
A health-systems-strengthening approach supporting the longitudinal collection, analysis and monitoring of community health and safety impacts.
Community development
While not the focus of a health impact assessment, SHAPE’s approach can fold certain community health and safety elements into company community-development or social-investment strategies, enhancing the extended benefits of a project.
Tell us about the project.
Whether you need a health impact assessment, an independent review of medical services, or senior health counsel at board level — tell us about the project, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right firm for it.