Adaptive Management of Distinctly Climate Sensitive Health Threats: The Example of Extreme Heat

It is clear that climate change will bring a host of adverse health impacts, some of which are already apparent, and that some exposures will be outside public health's coping range. Public health adaptation efforts are in their infancy, and most adaptation to date has been reactive, not planned. There is no consensus regarding the integration of planned adaptation into public health practice, specifically the degree to which efforts should shore up current programming versus focusing on novel programming and management strategies.

The appropriate approach will depend on several factors and be both hazard- and context specific. As public health programming already addresses many relevant threats, planned adaptation should enhance this programming in most areas, but also identify distinctly climate-sensitive health threats likely to require novel management strategies.

To facilitate planned adaptation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has outlined criteria for identifying distinctly climate sensitive health threats. These include:

1. High levels of population vulnerability to hydrometeorological hazards.

2. Extreme events that are likely to overwhelm preparedness activities.

3. Extreme events that compromise systems and infrastructure that protect public health.

4. Fundamental alteration to basic ecosystem services important to public health.

5. Abrupt ecosystem shifts favoring the disease introduction or reemergence.

In addition, the CDC suggests that adaptive management, an iterative framework used in several other sectors, may be a useful framework for engaging these concerns.

This presentation will outline criteria for identifying distinctly climate sensitive health threats and provide an introduction to the adaptive management framework, including its history, application in other sectors, and overview of its applications to public health. The speaker will illustrate how adaptive management can be used to facilitate planned public health adaptation to climate change by focusing on the example of extreme heat events in urban environments.