Climate and health: A state health agency perspective on the changing climate

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.