Hi Everyone,
I wanted to start a thread on Climate Change and pose a few questions:
- Are you involved in Climate Change work at all? If so, how? And to what extent or range of impacts are you looking at?
In my HBE position with Island Health, we have been contributing to the development of local government led Climate Change Adaptation Plans. This is being done by local Environmental Health Officer, Medical Health Officer, and as warranted involvement from our Sustainability team (that looks more so at our health service facilities and affliated infrastructure). We have been bringing our health voice to the table on a range of impacts, such as Wildfire Smoke events, Extreme Heat (and weather), Sea Level Rise, infectious diseases and emergent pathogens, Population Health trends and Social Resiliency to the discussion, to name but a few.
I'm curious to hear about your experiences and/or involvement.
Thank you,
Jade
Your work with Island Health sounds really progressive in this area. Here in Saskatoon, we have had minimal involvement in direct climate change efforts however our Medical Health Officers have been involved in the support of the Climate Action Plan that went to Council in September.
Thanks Cora, that really insighful and helps a great deal.
Further to that, has anyone been involved in 'human health vulnerability assessment and adaptation strategies' in their respective organizations? This term seems to be brought up more and more, and as I understand some of our Health Authorities in BC are actively embarking on this work, mine, however, is quite new to this discussion - beyond health care services that is. I'd love to hear from others (and/or if you're connected to this Federal grant program work: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/programs/health-adapt.html).
Much appreciated!
Hi Jade
I am working on a Climate Change Health Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment for our health unit district in ONtario. Many health units are doing this work as it is part of the Ontario Public Health Standards in the Healthy Environments Program. There some great online resources; one that I'm using a lot is www.climatedata.ca
The Ministry of Health created a toolkit to help guide this work. If you google Ontario Climate Change and Health toolkit you should be able to find it (I wasn't able to paste in the actual link).
Happy to share other resources if that would be helpful!
Sue