Oral

Public health policies and measures being designed and implemented to address climate change risks primarily focus on population vulnerabilities. Identification of specific health vulnerabilities is important, but frames the issue is terms of negatives (threats, harms). A next step for communities and policymakers is to develop positive actions and specific strategies that increase community resilience to climate change. Community resilience is the ability of neighborhoods to anticipate and prepare for risks, limit the effects of these risks, and be able to adapt quickly to changing conditions. By increasing resilience, communities can also address population sensitivities and deficiencies in adaptive capacities. Strategies to advance community resilience under climate change conditions include high-level policy options as well as community capacity-building efforts. The purpose of this session is to present these two aspects of community resilience and bring together the latest expertise to specifically address the following questions: (1) How do we define community resilience in the face of climate change public health threats? (2) What specific elements of resilience do communities have the ability to alter in this era of diminished resources? (3) How can public health measures and strategies be modified to increase the resilience of communities in face of uncertainty about the magnitude and extent of climate change, development pathways, and other factors? In this session, we bring together an expert panel to discuss these questions and to provide examples of practical applications of how communities can build capacity to address current environmental stressors and climate change risks. Strategies will be discussed that show how to improve disaster risk management and how to build social capital on a neighborhood level to better cope with environmental stressors related to climate change. Speakers on the panel will engage the audience in an interactive session throughout, so that they will have a deeper understanding of the concept of community resilience with respect to climate change risks. The session will provide attendees with some real world examples from both a national and international perspective on how to affect current public health policies to improve resilience and increase local capacity to reduce future climate-related hazards.

Session Objectives: 1) Identify 2 strategies to increase local resilience to climate change by anticipating environmental health risks and limiting their effects by adapting quickly to changing conditions. 2) Discuss one element of resilience that communities can alter, even in times of limited budgets and financial constraints. 3) Identify at least one real world example of how public health policies have been adapted to increase community resilience.