268273
Climate and health: A state health agency perspective on the changing climate
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
: 11:10 AM - 11:30 AM
Surili Sutaria, MS
,
Association of Public Health Laboratories, Workplace, Silver Spring, MD
Kathleen Dolan
,
Environmental Health, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Arlington, VA
Recent climate-related challenges, from extreme weather events to changing patterns of communicable disease, have already demonstrated the critical need to improve public health capacity to identify, prevent, and respond to climate related threats. In the winter of 2012, ASTHO launched a follow-up to the 2008 survey on climate change and state and territorial public health in the United States. This assessment asked Senior Deputies in all of ASTHO's member state and territorial health agencies to share their agency-wide perspectives on general perceptions of how climate change is affecting the health of the populations they serve in addition to the current adaptation and mitigation practices. A complementary assessment asked State Environmental Health Directors of each health agency to provide a division-level point of view on staff education and resource needs to effectively plan for and respond to the health impacts associated with climate change. ASTHO will use the lessons learned from both needs assessments in several distinct ways. First, an analysis of the survey's results will be used to increase understanding of the level of engagement of public health leaders in climate change activities. Also, the results from the 2008 and 2012 surveys will be compared to gauge the level of programmatic change and identify the trends of climate-related activities in health agencies. Furthermore, survey results will provide a snapshot of past versus current views and observations held by public health leaders with regard to the health consequences of climate change across the country. Finally, the lessons learned from the survey will assist the public health community with promoting climate change literacy and advocating for immediate action at all levels of government.
Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health education
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Public health or related research
Learning Objectives: 1. Compare survey results from 2008 and 2012 climate change capacity building surveys.
2. Identify and evaluate programmatic change in health departments over the past four years.
3. Discuss past and current the opinions of public health leaders on climate and health.
4. Advance climate change literacy and advocacy.
Keywords: Climate Change, Environmental Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I developed and administered the assessment that is discussed in the abstract.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
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