Climate Change

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Unless action is taken to curb global climate change, within the next 10 years the earth will pass a “tipping point” beyond which devastating consequences will become unavoidable. It is critical that America’s public health systems understand and adapt to the health implications of climate change.

In the Spotlight

NACCHO Webinar: Integrating Climate Change and Public Health Preparedness

NACCHO is hosting a webinar on Integrating Climate Change and Public Health Preparedness on May 23 from 2:30-4:00 PM EDT. This webinar will provide local, state, and federal preparedness planners and responders, and LHD directors with information and strategies to incorporate climate change considerations into their everyday work. Participants will learn why and how to address climate change in their public health preparedness planning efforts, including the effects of climate change on public health preparedness; examples of regional risks created and worsened by climate change; strategies for determining regional and local risks; and strategies for identifying and developing helpful partnerships. Click here to register for the webinar.

Archived Webinar - Public Health Planning and Climate Change: Lessons from Superstorm Sandy

NACCHO hosted a webinar on Public Health Planning and Climate Change: Lessons from Superstorm Sandy. This webinar features the experiences of two LHDs through Superstorm Sandy and the lessons that were learned from these experiences. New York City and Ocean County, NJ, share their experiences, lessons learned, and planning tips for other jurisdictions to help them plan for their own climate-related risks. Click here to view the webinar.

Featured Resource

Metadata Access Tool for Climate and Health

The Metadata Access Tool for Climate and Health (MATCH) is a publicly accessible, online tool for researchers that offers centralized access to metadata—standardized contextual information—about thousands of government-held datasets related to health, the environment, and climate-science. MATCH is one of a growing number of tools, driven by open data that are being made available by the Obama Administration as fuel for innovation, ideas, and insights— in this case, at the important intersection of climate and human health. Learn more below:

New! NACCHO Climate Change Toolkit

Climate change is impacting the public health of our communities. We are witnessing an increase in extreme heat and precipitation events across the country. Emerging diseases like dengue fever are on the rise. Local health departments can take actions now to effectively protect their communities by preparing and responding to the health effects of climate change.

The NACCHO Climate Change Toolkit is designed to provide tools and resources to help local public health practitioners plan for and address the health effects of climate change in their jurisdictions. This toolkit contains tools and examples to help local health departments with climate change strategic planning, conducting vulnerability assessments, communicating about climate change, adapting to the effects of climate change, and more.

To learn more and access the toolkit, rate tools or submit tools, click more. More »

Demonstration Sites

NACCHO invited local health departments (LHDs) to submit applications in response to a request for proposals to conduct a one-year demonstration project to provide support to LHDs towards increasing the level of coordination and communication between disparate programs involved in addressing the public health consequences of climate change.

Fact sheets about the selected sites and their projects are available below. The fact sheets include a summary of the project, lessons learned, project outcomes, and information on project sustainability and capacity building.