Progress of Local Health Department Planning Actions for Climate Change: Perspectives from California, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
; 19(13)2022 06 29.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1934054
ABSTRACT
Public health departments are on the frontlines of protecting vulnerable groups and working to eliminate health disparities through prevention interventions, disease surveillance and community education. Exploration of the roles national, state and local health departments (LHDs) play in advancing climate change planning and actions to protect public health is a developing arena of research. This paper presents insights from local public health departments in California, USA on how they addressed the barriers to climate adaptation planning with support from the California Department of Public Health's Office of Health Equity Climate Change and Health Equity Section (OHE), which administers the California Building Resilience Against Climate Effects Project (CalBRACE). With support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Climate-Ready States and Cities Initiative (CRSCI), CalBRACE initiated an adaptation project to seed climate planning and actions in county health departments. In this study, we compared the barriers and strategies of twenty-two urban and rural LHDs and explored potential options for climate change adaptation in the public health framework. Using key informant interviews and document reviews, the results showed how engagement with CalBRACE's Local Health Department Partnership on Climate Change influenced the county departments' ability to overcome barriers to adaptation through the diversification of funding sources, the leveraging strategic collaborations, extensive public education and communication campaigns, and the development of political capital and champions. The lessons learned and recommendations from this research may provide pathways and practices for national, state and local level health departments to collaborate in developing protocols and integrating systems to respond to health-related climate change impacts, adaptation and implementation.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Climate Change
/
Health Equity
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Qualitative research
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Ijerph19137984
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