By Jennifer Miller, PhD, Public Health Institute’s Center for Climate Change & Health
Climate change has been described as the greatest global health threat of the 21st century. (Lancet 2009) To find out why, join the CDC’s George Luber, the Public Health Institute’s (PHI) Dr. Linda Rudolph, Dr. Jonathon Patz, Director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin, and Sandi Galvez of the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII) for a provocative Web Forum on May 14, 2014 at 12:00 PM EDT about why climate change is something that everyone in public health should be addressing, and why everyone working on climate change should be thinking about health.
Climate change is and will continue to impact all facets of health. The public health sector has a critical role to play, on the front lines addressing those health impacts; giving voice to the health implications of failure to act on climate change; fostering climate resilient communities; and ensuring that strategies to address climate change protect health, reduce health inequities, and maximize health co-benefits. PHI has been exploring the linkages between climate change and public health, and exploring how those of us in public health, related fields and our partners and allies can engage with and address this urgent health challenge.
In this Web Forum, PHI’s Center for Climate Change & Health presents Climate Change and Health: A Framework for Action, mapping climate change processes against a social determinants of health framework to identify opportunities for action at the intersection. The framework is based on interviews and focus groups with over 135 people working in climate change and in public health. It also builds upon BARHII’s Public Health Framework for Reducing Health Inequities (2006), and on the Climate Change and Health Framework developed by Patz and Haines (JAMA, 2004). It endeavors to provide a visual way to understand the relationships between climate change and health/health inequities, and how public health and climate change interventions are linked.
Speakers include George Luber, PhD, Associate Director for Climate Change at the CDC National Center for Environmental Health; Dr. Jonathon Patz, Professor and Director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin; Dr. Linda Rudolph, co-director of the Public Health Institute’s Center for Climate Change & Health; and Sandi Galvez of the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative.
For more information on the Public Health Institute and the Center for Climate Change & Health, visit www.phi.org and www.climatehealthconnect.org.
This Web Forum is sponsored by the Public Health Institute, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the National Association of County and City Health Officials, with funding from the Kresge Foundation.
