scholarly journals Co-developing climate services for public health: stakeholder needs and perceptions for the prevention and control ofAedes-transmitted diseases in the Caribbean

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Stewart-Ibarra ◽  
Moory Romero ◽  
Avery Q. J. Hinds ◽  
Rachel Lowe ◽  
Roché Mahon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Climate And Health ◽  
The Caribbean

AbstractBackgroundSmall island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean region are challenged with managing the health outcomes of a changing climate. Health and climate sectors have partnered to co-develop climate services to improve the management of these diseases, for example, through the development of climate-driven early warning systems. The objective of this study was to identify health and climate stakeholder perceptions and needs in the Caribbean, with respect to the development of climate services for arboviruses (e.g. dengue, chikungunya, and Zika).MethodsStakeholders included public decision makers and practitioners from the climate and health sectors at the regional (Caribbean) level and from the countries of Dominica and Barbados. From April to June 2017, we conducted interviews (n=41), surveys (n=32), and national workshops with stakeholders. Survey responses were tabulated and audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative coding to identify responses by research topic, country/region, and sector.ResultsHealth practitioners indicated that their jurisdiction is currently experiencing an increased risk of diseases transmitted byAe. aegyptidue to climate variability, and most anticipated that this risk will increase in the future. National health sectors reported financial limitations and a lack of technical expertise in geographic information systems (GIS), statistics, and modeling, which constrained their ability to implement climate services for arboviruses. National climate sectors were constrained by a lack of personnel. Stakeholders highlighted the need to strengthen partnerships with the private sector, academia, and civil society. They identified a gap in local research on climate-arbovirus linkages, which constrained the ability of the health sector to make informed decisions. Strategies to strengthen the climate-health partnership included a top-down approach by engaging senior leadership, multi-lateral collaboration agreements, national committees on climate and health, and shared spaces of dialogue. Mechanisms for mainstreaming climate services for health operations to control arboviruses included climate-health bulletins and an online GIS platform that would allow for regional data sharing and the generation of spatiotemporal epidemic forecasts.ConclusionsThese findings support the creation of interdisciplinary and intersectoral communities of practices and the co-design of climate services for the Caribbean public health sector. By fostering the effective use of climate information within health policy, research and practice, nations will have greater capacity to adapt to a changing climate.

scholarly journals Building resilience to mosquito-borne diseases in the Caribbean

PLoS Biology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. e3000791
Author(s):  
Rachel Lowe ◽  
Sadie J. Ryan ◽  
Roché Mahon ◽  
Cedric J. Van Meerbeeck ◽  
Adrian R. Trotman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Biological Research ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Health And Well Being

Small island developing states in the Caribbean are among the most vulnerable countries on the planet to climate variability and climate change. In the last 3 decades, the Caribbean region has undergone frequent and intense heat waves, storms, floods, and droughts. This has had a detrimental impact on population health and well-being, including an increase in infectious disease outbreaks. Recent advances in climate science have enhanced our ability to anticipate hydrometeorological hazards and associated public health challenges. Here, we discuss progress towards bridging the gap between climate science and public health decision-making in the Caribbean to build health system resilience to extreme climatic events. We focus on the development of climate services to help manage mosquito-transmitted disease epidemics. There are numerous areas of ongoing biological research aimed at better understanding the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases. Here, we emphasise additional factors that affect our ability to operationalise this biological understanding. We highlight a lack of financial resources, technical expertise, data sharing, and formalised partnerships between climate and health communities as major limiting factors to developing sustainable climate services for health. Recommendations include investing in integrated climate, health and mosquito surveillance systems, building regional and local human resource capacities, and designing national and regional cross-sectoral policies and national action plans. This will contribute towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and maximising regional development partnerships and co-benefits for improved health and well-being in the Caribbean.

scholarly journals Co-learning during the co-creation of a dengue early warning system for the health sector in Barbados

2022 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. e007842
Author(s):  
Anna M Stewart-Ibarra ◽  
Leslie Rollock ◽  
Sabu Best ◽  
Tia Brown ◽  
Avriel R Diaz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health System ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Warning System ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Adaptation Strategy ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Climate And Health

Over the past decade, the Caribbean region has been challenged by compound climate and health hazards, including tropical storms, extreme heat and droughts and overlapping epidemics of mosquito-borne diseases, including dengue, chikungunya and Zika. Early warning systems (EWS) are a key climate change adaptation strategy for the health sector. An EWS can integrate climate information in forecasting models to predict the risk of disease outbreaks several weeks or months in advance. In this article, we share our experiences of co-learning during the process of co-creating a dengue EWS for the health sector in Barbados, and we discuss barriers to implementation as well as key opportunities. This process has involved bringing together health and climate practitioners with transdisciplinary researchers to jointly identify needs and priorities, assess available data, co-create an early warning tool, gather feedback via national and regional consultations and conduct trainings. Implementation is ongoing and our team continues to be committed to a long-term process of collaboration. Developing strong partnerships, particularly between the climate and health sectors in Barbados, has been a critical part of the research and development. In many countries, the national climate and health sectors have not worked together in a sustained or formal manner. This collaborative process has purposefully pushed us out of our comfort zone, challenging us to venture beyond our institutional and disciplinary silos. Through the co-creation of the EWS, we anticipate that the Barbados health system will be better able to mainstream climate information into decision-making processes using tailored tools, such as epidemic forecast reports, risk maps and climate-health bulletins, ultimately increasing the resilience of the health system.

scholarly journals Advancing environmental public health in Latin America and the Caribbean

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Marcelo Korc ◽  
Fred Hauchman
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Environmental Public Health ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Health And Well Being

This paper highlights the important leadership role of the public health sector, working with other governmental sectors and nongovernmental entities, to advance environmental public health in Latin America and the Caribbean toward the achievement of 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 3: Health and Well-Being. The most pressing current and future environmental public health threats are discussed, followed by a brief review of major historical and current international and regional efforts to address these concerns. The paper concludes with a discussion of three major components of a regional environmental public health agenda that responsible parties can undertake to make significant progress toward ensuring the health and well-being of all people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

scholarly journals Co-developing climate services for public health: Stakeholder needs and perceptions for the prevention and control of Aedes-transmitted diseases in the Caribbean

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. e0007772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Stewart-Ibarra ◽  
Moory Romero ◽  
Avery Q. J. Hinds ◽  
Rachel Lowe ◽  
Roché Mahon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Prevention And Control ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
And Control ◽  
Stakeholder Needs

General Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-42
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Local Food ◽  
Integrated Model ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Agricultural Diversification ◽  
The Caribbean

There are myriad issues facing traditional farming in the Caribbean region. Despite various policy interventions and implementation of concepts over the past five decades for agricultural diversification in the region to increase local food production, the region is still grappling with finding an appropriate model to solve major issues. The issues are now exacerbated by the impacts of climate change, and major shifts in the approach to solving the issues have not yet proved fruitful. Against the setback of issues, controversies, and problems of farming in the Caribbean and the St. Kitts-Nevis example of a small island developing state (SID), the justification will be made for a diversified-integrated model that can account for the setbacks by optimizing farm and non-farm waste to build productivity, competitiveness, flexibility, and sustainability which are categorically the factors of successful farming.

Developing future sea level services for Small Island Developing States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetlana Jevrejeva ◽  
Judith Wolf ◽  
Andy Matthews ◽  
Joanne Williams ◽  
David Byrne ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Caribbean Islands ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
And Sea Level

<p>The Caribbean islands encompass some of the most vulnerable coastlines in terms of sea level rise, exposure to tropical cyclones, changes in waves and storm surges. Climate in the Caribbean is already changing and sea level rise impacts are already being felt. Considerable local and regional variations in the rate, magnitude, and direction of sea-level change can be expected as a result of thermal expansion, tectonic movements, and changes in ocean circulation. Governments in the Caribbean recognise that climate change and sea level rise are serious threats to the sustainable development and economic growth of the Caribbean islands and urgent actions are required to increase the resilience and make decisions about how to adapt to future climate change (Caribbean Marine Climate Change Report Card 2017; IPCC 2014).</p><p>As part of the UK Commonwealth Marine Economies (CME) Programme and through collaboration with local stakeholders in St Vincent, we have identified particular areas at risk from changing water level and wave conditions. The Caribbean Sea, particularly the Lesser Antilles, suffers from limited observational data due to a lack of coastal monitoring, making numerical models even more important to fill this gap. The current projects brings together improved access to tide gauge observations, as well as global, regional and local water level and wave modelling to provide useful tools for coastal planners.</p><p>We present our initial design of a coastal data hub with sea level information for stakeholder access in St. Vincent and Grenadines, Grenada and St Lucia, with potential development of the hub for the Caribbean region. The work presented here is a contribution to the wide range of ongoing activities under the Commonwealth Marine Economies (CME) Programme in the Caribbean, falling within the work package “Development of a coastal data hub for stakeholder access in the Caribbean region”, under the NOC led projects “Climate Change Impact Assessment: Ocean Modelling and Monitoring for the Caribbean CME states”.</p>

Assessing protected area effectiveness within the Caribbean under changing climate conditions: A case study of the small island, Trinidad

2019 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 185-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shobha S. Maharaj ◽  
Hamish Asmath ◽  
Safraz Ali ◽  
John Agard ◽  
Stephen A. Harris ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Protected Area ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
The Caribbean

scholarly journals Mapping Tourism Stakeholders’ Weather and Climate Information-Seeking Behavior in Fiji

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Nalau ◽  
S. Becken ◽  
S. Noakes ◽  
B. Mackey
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Information Seeking Behavior ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Tourism Sector ◽  
Weather And Climate ◽  
Seeking Behavior

Abstract Tourism is inherently dependent on weather and climate, and its sustainability and resilience to adverse weather and climate impacts is greatly enhanced by providing tailored climate services to tourism sector stakeholders. Climate services need to integrate standard weather forecasts, with early warning systems, seasonal forecasts, and long-term projections of climatic changes in order to meet the information needs of the sector. While a growing number of studies address the potential climate change impacts on tourism, little is known about how the tourism sector accesses, uses, and analyses the available weather and climate information. This research presents findings from an exploratory study on weather and climate information-seeking behavior of 15 private and public tourism sector stakeholders in the Republic of Fiji. The results show a variety of weather and climate information-seeking paths in use, which differ depending on levels of professional responsibility, weather and climate literacy, and information and digital competency. Those with high weather information literacy access a broader variety of sources. Hence, their interpretation does not focus only on their own location, but “weather” is seen as a broad spatial phenomenon that might or might not result in adverse effects in their location. Understanding diverse weather and climate information-seeking paths can aid in better targeting climate and adaptation services across different stakeholder groups. Especially in the context of small island developing states (SIDS), the integration of traditional, local, and scientific knowledge as information sources is likely to provide a more useful and context-specific basis for climate adaptation planning within the sector.

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