healthiar
Introduction
healthiar is an R package to quantify and monetize health impacts attributable to exposure (e.g. air pollution, noise...) in a study area. Using healthiar, you can ...
Quantify health impacts choosing among multiple input data formats and calculation pathways:
Exposure data as single value or as distribution
Relative risk or absolute risk
Fixed-shape or user-defined exposure-response functions
Single or age-specific baseline health data (life table approach)
Iterate across geographical units
Compare scenarios
Include and summarize uncertainties
Monetize health impacts or perform cost-benefit analyses adjusting for inflation and discounting
Consider social inequalities in the assessment and stratify the results
Getting started
You have different materials to learn about the R package healthiar.
Cheat sheet
Have a quick and visual look at the cheat sheet
Vignette
Read the vignette (~ package manual) intro_to_healthiar, which you you can access
a) on the package website (recommended)
b) in R Studio: Click on the Packages tab in RStudio, scroll down to the healthiar package and clicking on the hyperlinks healthiar > User guides, package vignettes and other documentation
c) in the web browser: Run browseVignettes("healthiar") in the R console and the page will open up in your browser
Function documentation
See the function help pages for information about specific functions. In RStudio, you can access the function documentation of e.g. the function attribute_health by
a) going to the reference page of the package website
b) running ?attribute_health in RStudio (with healthiar loaded)
c) going to the Packages tab and then clicking on healthiar
Video
Watch a 45 minutes video from an online international workshop (30 September 2025), which can be found here. The slides of the presentation can be found here.
Installation
We recommend to frequently install the newest healthiar version. Please note that healthiar requires R version 4.3.0 or higher. There are two options to install healthiar:
a) From CRAN: Click on the Packages tab in RStudio and on the Install button. Leave the Install from: option set to Reporsitory (CRAN) and then search and select healthiar and finally click on Install, keeping Install dependencies activated.
b) From Github (most recent version): Run the following commands below in RStudio to install healthiar:
install.packages(c("knitr", "rmarkdown"))remotes::install_github(repo = "SwissTPH/healthiar", build_vignettes = TRUE)- Note: install or update all package dependencies (= other packages that are needed for healthiar) if you get asked to do so
After installation, do not forget to load the package by running the call library(healthiar).
Citation
We love that you use healthiar. In that case, please do not forget to cite healthiar in your work. Three options to get there:
a) On the healthiar package website
b) See CITATION.R
c) In your R console, enter citation("healthiar").
In options b) and c), you always see the updated citation. In option a), you see citation of the healthiar version that you have installed locally, which might be outdated.
Disclamer and licence
By using healthiar, you confirm that you agree with the following disclaimer and terms of the licence:
a) Disclaimer: The R package healthiar is work in progress and the developers are not liable for the results.
b) License: Available here.
Feedback
Feel free provide feedback via GitHub issues
Presenting healthiar
If you would like us to present healthiar at a conference, lecture or training, please, contact us: alberto.castrofernandez@swisstph.ch and axel.luyten@swisstph.ch
Acknowledgements
healthiar was been developed under the framework of EU project BEST-COST. BEST-COST is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under Grant Agreement No.101095408.