Oral

These four presentations address a range of some of the most pressing climate-health impacts that affect vulnerable communities from across the U.S., and strategies that some of these communities are using to address these health problems: heat stress in Arizona; dengue fever in the Texas-Mexico border region; air pollution in vulnerable communities in metropolitan New York; and air pollution from forest fires across the desert and mountain West and Southwest. The presentations will emphasize broad strategies to help prepare for the future effects of climate change in vulnerable communities. Public health officials who attend the session may come with one particular type of community vulnerability or exposure in mind – heat stress or air pollution, for example – but leave having heard about other relevant, potential exposures that weren’t previously on their radar - infectious disease vulnerabilities, for example – but that also affect their constituents. Because the session offers discussions of experiences from a geographic range of case study areas, attendees may forge new alliances with colleagues working across other disciplines, or discover policy alternatives from other areas that offer workable solutions for their local problems.

Session Objectives: 1. Explain connections between global warming and local climate-health impacts from forest fire emissions; other air pollutants; heat islands; and infectious disease outbreaks. 2. Identify three factors that contribute to population vulnerabilities to climate change, and two ways in which improved public health surveillance and monitoring can protect vulnerable populations from health effects associated with climate change; 3. Describe at least one successful example of a community policy that may reduce health impacts associated with global warming.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)