Climate Change Environmental Public Health Indicators: Guidance for Local Health Departments

BACKGROUND: Climate change represents an important and growing proportion of the global burden of disease. Local health departments (LHDs) take the lead in activities that are directly impacted by the changing climate, such as hazard mitigation planning and response. They also actively participate in collecting data and conducting surveillance on community health concerns that are directly or indirectly affected by climate change, such as the possibility of permanent evacuation from the sites of major climate disasters like Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, and Sandy. It is critical that the public health community has both the expertise and the resources to identify and respond to the challenges presented by climate change.

METHODS: LHDs will need to develop quantitative measures (or indicators) to track trends in environmental risk, human health outcomes, and population vulnerability to specific climatic events. Environmental Public Health Indicators (EPHIs) are used by local, state, and federal health agencies to track the status of: environmental hazards; exposure to those hazards; health effects of exposure; and, public health interventions designed to reduce or prevent the hazard, exposure, or resulting health effect. CSTE’s State Environmental Health Indicators Collaborative (SEHIC) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Environmental Health Tracking Network are developing climate and health EPHIs at the state and federal levels. However, they are also needed at the local level to track variations in community vulnerability and to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions designed to enhance community resilience. The SEHIC climate change working group has filled this gap by publishing a guidance document designed to help LHDs downscale existing climate and health indicators to the local level.

RESULTS: This session will begin with an overview of the EPHIs developed by the SEHIC working group at the state level. It will then walk through the three-tiered approach for establishing a local climate change environmental public health tracking program that is proposed by the new local guidance document. Both presentations will place emphasis on opportunities to partner with external resources at the local, state, and federal levels.

CONCLUSIONS: Local climate change EPHIs allow LHDs to incorporate climate-related trends into the larger health department planning process. These metrics can be used to perform vulnerability assessments highlighting health disparities that may be impacted by climate change. When incorporated into the adaptation planning process, vulnerability assessments can be leveraged to ensure that interventions designed to address climate change do not further exacerbate existing disparities.