Building Resilience Against Climate Effects: Implementing and Evaluating Adaptation Strategies that Protect and Promote Human Health

Climate change intensifies existing climate-sensitive health threats and creates new challenges by exposing more people in more places to hazardous weather and climate conditions (National Climate Assessment). Increasing temperatures, frequency and intensity of heat waves, heavy precipitation and flooding affects health in a number of ways. Each region of the United States experiences climate change and its impacts on health differently, due to the regions’ location-specific climate exposures The changing climate also interacts with demographic and social determinants of health to influence the extent of consequences; that is, not everyone is affected equally. Examples of populations at high risk of exposure to adverse climate related heart threats include communities of color, older adults, groups that have been economically and socially marginalized and children (NCA). This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) describes a systematic approach for health agencies to identify their climate-related challenges and subsequent opportunities to facilitate social system reorganization, changes, and learning, e.g. implementing and evaluation adaptation actions (Cutter, 2008). In implementing and evaluating adaptation actions, this NOFO intends to develop health department and community resilience and generate evidence for use in larger-scale and more frequent adaptation for health. adaptation actions designed to protect health from climate-related