In an article which recently appeared in Roll Call, David Dyjack, the National Association of County and City Health Officials’ (NACCHO) Associate Executive Director, was asked to comment on a range of issues related to local public health and climate change, including decreasing funding levels and the need for community-specific public health adaptation strategies. Dyjack noted that while the Obama administration has continuously stressed that an increased level of attention needs to be paid to climate change mitigation and adaptation, budgets for the crucial programs needed to make this a reality have been continuously cut both by congress and his own administration.

To highlight the importance of altering this dynamic, Dyjack said that as “public health is profoundly local” the “challenges [caused by climate change] are local, and the solutions are local.” NACCHO, which has also seen its grant funding for climate change cut dramatically, will continue to provide technical assistance and resources for the 2,800 local public health departments operating nationwide that constitute its membership base.

Read the full article here (see page 4).

NACCHO Resources:

• NACCHO Climate Change and Public Health Online Course: The Climate Change and Public Health course defines climate change and describes the ways that climate change impact public health by exploring the topic of climate change mitigation and adaptation and local health department roles in each of these areas.
• NACCHO Climate Change Toolkit: 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.
• Long Term Planning for Climate Change: What Local Public Health Should Consider Moving Forward
• Integrating Extreme Weather Events into Preparedness Planning