First Nationwide Climate Change Survey of Public Health Departments

Climate change is a concern to most local public health directors but few have resources to tackle the problem, according to a national survey conducted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and George Mason University. The survey, included in the report Are We Ready ? Preparing for the Public Health Challenges of Climate Change, is the first national one of its kind that assesses the perceptions and activities of local public health directors regarding climate change and public health.

More than half of the surveyed directors are concerned about the health effects of climate change on their jurisdictions, though only a small group has been able to make adaptation or prevention a priority.

The majority of health directors said they perceived a lack of knowledge about climate change both within their health department and among other key stakeholders in their communities, a lack of adaptation and mitigation planning expertise in the public health community at large, and significant financial and human resource limitations on their ability to respond to climate change. The survey revealed the following about the surveyed public health directors:

* nearly 70% believed that climate change had already occurred in their jurisdictions;

* seventy-eight percent believed their jurisdictions would experience climate changes over the next 20 years;

* sixty percent said that their local populations would experience one or more serious public health problems over the next 20 years as a result of climate change;

* more than 50% felt that climate change was an "important priority," but only 19% of respondents indicated that climate change was among their departments' top 10 current priorities;

* eighty-two percent felt they lacked the expertise to craft adaptation plans; and

* seventy-seven percent said that additional resources would improve their departments' ability to deal with climate change as a public health issue.

Recommendations from the report focus on protecting preventing climate-related health dangers by ensuring the responsiveness and efficiency of the public health system, preventing climate-related disease as much as possible by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to levels required to avoid the most severe effects of climate change, and aligning desirable goals like reductions in greenhouse gasses with critical public health goals.

Are We Ready? Preparing for the Public Health Challenges of Climate Change is the first nationally representative survey to assess the perceptions and activities of local public health directors regarding climate change and public health. One hundred and thirty-three local health department directors from across the country answered a series of questions meant to assess their perceptions of climate change and its potential public health effects, their communities' level of preparedness for the health impacts of climate change, their current activities to prevent or mitigate climate change, and their opinions on necessary resources to best address climate change.