♦ BCCPH 5th Annual Meeting: A Success!
♦ BCCPH Partnership: Action Teams Updates
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♦ 2020 Heat Deaths More than Double 2019 Heat Deaths
♦ Climate and Health News Roundup
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Bridging Climate Change and Public Health 5th Annual Meeting was a Success! |
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On December 9th, 2020, over 70 individuals gathered virtually to participate in the 5th Annual BCCPH Meeting. The meeting kicked-off with a presentation on climate-health challenges and goals and then transitioned to a presentation on the collaborative's journey through 2020. Participants then had the opportunity to learn of existing regional resilience collaborative structures and to provide their input as to what direction the collaborative should take. The meeting came to a close following the announcement of the 2020 Climate and Health Champions awards.
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- BCCPH partnership established in 2016, with the first annual meeting held that year and every year thereafter
- The partnership included representatives from a diverse array of local community organizations, private businesses, government agencies, and academic institutions
- Climate and Health Strategic Plan developed and published in 2017 by selected partners of BCCPH
- The partners created a mission and vision and identified 5 strategic directions (image below)
- For each strategic direction, an action team was created
- Members of the action teams were engaged with the goals and projects
- In 2019, BCCPH and the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) initiated a 1-year collaboration under the North American Partnership for Environmental Community Action (NAPECA) grant to provide support to the partnership
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Action Team: Celebrating Success and Champions |
Established in 2017, The Maricopa County Climate and Health Champion Award recognition program celebrates those in our community who are working to improve health and quality of life through efforts that counter the health impacts of climate change. Our aim is to build community awareness and knowledge about climate change and health and share information about successful interventions. Nominations are made in the following categories: individual, youth, organization, business, and research. 2020 marks the third year of the program distributing awards.
Congratulations to the 2020 Climate and Health Champions!
- Individual: Vjollca Berisha and David Dube
To learn more about the 2020 Climate and Health Champions and their accomplishments, please contact us at the Office of Epidemiology and Data Services at the Maricopa County Department of Public Health at climateandhealth@mail.maricopa.gov . Additional information will also be available on the Maricopa County Bridging Climate Change and Public Health webpage in January.
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Action Team: Building Community Awareness |
Members of this action team have worked on a communication platform that included the development of posters about heat illness and safety to be distributed to local cooling centers. Additionally, pocket-sized cards with information about emergency warning signs of heat illness were created and distributed to homebound individuals, mobile home residents, COVID-19 testing centers, and select healthcare facilities.
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The Healthcare Provider Survey was initiated in 2018 to enhance the development of a countywide alert communication to healthcare providers about excessive heat events. The aims of the alert are to 1) inform hospitals and urgent care facilities, and thus healthcare providers, about excessive heat warnings; 2) increase healthcare provider awareness of the risks of heat exposure to their patients; 3) increase healthcare provider consideration of potentially vulnerable patient populations prior to discharge; 4) provide information regarding resources for heat relief available throughout Maricopa County that can be passed on to patients prior to discharge; and 5) open lines of communication between MCDPH and healthcare providers, regarding exposure to excessive heat and other climate-sensitive hazards. The survey was implemented in 2018 and 2019 to determine what information regarding heat exposure is most useful for hospitals and urgent care facilities. It will be launched again in 2021 to capture feedback from healthcare facilities and providers whose information was not captured through previous survey cycles.
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Action Team: Fostering Environmental Action |
A Review on How Arizona Businesses Can Protect Employee Health from Climate-Sensitive Hazards is a new document produced by the Fostering Environmental Action for Healthier Community Action Team of Bridging Climate Change and Public Health. The document focuses on the unique and extreme weather events that Arizonans face, describes the most prevalent challenges for Arizona businesses, and provides local resources and interventions that businesses can use with the hope to improve employee health to ultimately have a safer and more productive work environment.
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In 2019, the Maricopa County Department of Public Health (MCDPH), Office of Epidemiology and Data Services – Climate and Health Program, in collaboration with the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) applied and were selected to work together on the project “Energy Insecurity and Public Health: Going Further through Cross Sector Collaboration”. The Project will take place in Maricopa County and will focus on: Energy, Climate, Health, Equity, Social Justice, and Vulnerability. Financially, this project is being supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL) program whose vision is about building a culture of health within vulnerable communities.
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Energy insecurity adversely affects the most vulnerable households and is at the root of many indoor heat-related deaths among Maricopa County residents. The goal of the project is to understand the experience and social distribution of energy insecurity among residents and develop a tool that will be utilized by communities and/or leaders in different sectors to identify vulnerable communities and to advance more collaborative policy approaches to improve health equity. This project brings together stakeholders from different sectors including utilities, housing, human services, governmental agencies, community-based organizations and community members/residents of the selected neighborhoods. |
Action Team: Coordinating Research and Collaborative Efforts |
We are excited to announce that the Climate and Health Research Action Team has completed the paper, Gap Analysis of Climate and Health Research in Arizona. This study focuses on the public health effects of climate and climate change hazards, such as heat waves, dust storms, drought, wildfires, flooding, and poor air quality events for Maricopa County and the surrounding region. Heat and air quality are the climate change and public health impacts that have dominated research literature for the region to date. The report identifies important gaps related to climate-sensitive public health hazards which represent opportunities for further research, and in addition provides a knowledge repository (list of references) of published work in the field.
This study was the result of a collaboration between over 100 people concerned about the intersection of climate change and public health. The overall goal of the organization is to incorporate climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience work into local public health department program practice.
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Action Team: Promoting Community Awareness and Public Education |
In July 2020, the MCDPH Office of Epidemiology and Data Services, in partnership with MCDPH Office of Nutrition and Active Living and Salud en Balance, initiated a campaign under the Healthy Urban Environments (HUE) Initiative to provide educational materials that included information about extreme heat, safety tips and available resources in a nearby mobile home community. The purpose of this initiative, in addition to providing information, was to assess the community's knowledge about heat exposure, heat illness, available community heat resources, the ways residents cope with the heat, and how COVID-19 has affected their household's daily life. In order to learn more about residents' experiences, MCDPH, in collaboration with Salud en Balance, designed a survey which was implemented and distributed to residents of the mobile home community by Community Health Workers at Salud en Balance along with an informational Heat Toolkit. |
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The survey results revealed that the mobile home community was greatly impacted by COVID-19 in addition to negative impacts from heat. Household daily life was affected in many ways. Seventy-four percent reported that a household member lost a job, 28% - were unable to pay utilities, 22% - were unable to pay rent or mortgage, and 14% - were unable to provide food for the family. The second phase of the project is currently being conducted. |
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To learn more about the Action Teams or any of their projects, please contact us at the Office of Epidemiology and Data Services at the Maricopa County Department of Public Health at climateandhealth@mail.maricopa.gov
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2020 Heat Deaths More than Double Last Year's |
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As of November 14, there have been 253 confirmed heat-associated deaths in Maricopa County this year. An additional 82 cases are currently under investigation by the County Medical Examiner. At this time last year, there were 95 confirmed heat-associated deaths. |
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Climate and Health News Roundup |
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