Dynamic population health modeling for quantitative health impact assessment : Methodological foundation and selected applications

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) – the evaluation policies, projects, or proposals concerning their effects on human health – becomes increasingly common practice at the local, national, and EU-level. So far, no standard tool exists to aid the quantification step in HIA. This thesis proposes dynamic population health modeling as a methodological foundation for quantitative HIA by motivating and introducing a ready-to-use software tool for this purpose: DYNAMO-HIA. This tool is equipped with a unique and novel data-set, covering the most important life-style risk factors (alcohol, smoking, obesity) and a number of related chronic diseases enabling to conduct HIAs for most EU countries. In addition, selected applications are presented ranging from the health consequences of an EU-wide tax increase on alcohol to the quantification of the life-long health benefits of reducing obesity when entering adulthood.