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Any community near a mine should have this 116-page community-centred health assessment toolkit on hand. Created by Mining Watch Canada, the guide is extremely detailed. By encouraging communities to define and measure their own health throughout the mining process, the toolkit empowers communities. The toolkit goes tackles eight steps in the process, each with its own linked resources and suggested tools for the community.

The eight steps highlighted are:

Getting started: basic organizing of meetings, decision making, researching

Lay of the land: determining the main factors influencing health, community health mapping, focus groups

Project goals: narrowing down a specific focus

Strategies: gathering data both formally and informally

Action plan: attaching activities and projects to the goals set, using the agreed strategies

Do it: carrying out the action plan

Analyzing results: writing leaflets, reports and fact sheets

Evaluating the project: preparing for the media and reflecting with the community