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-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 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.

Communicating the Public Health Risks of Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda R. Weathers ◽  
Edward Maibach ◽  
Matthew Nisbet
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Health Community ◽  
Health Organizations ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Community ◽  
Public Health Organizations ◽  
Health And Well Being

Effective public communication and engagement have played important roles in ameliorating and managing a wide range of public health problems including tobacco and substance use, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, vaccine preventable diseases, sudden infant death syndrome, and automobile injuries and fatalities. The public health community must harness what has been learned about effective public communication to alert and engage the public and policy makers about the health threats of climate change. This need is driven by three main factors. First, people’s health is already being harmed by climate change, and the magnitude of this harm is almost certain to get much worse if effective actions are not soon taken to limit climate change and to help communities successfully adapt to unavoidable changes in their climate. Therefore, public health organizations and professionals have a responsibility to inform communities about these risks and how they can be averted. Second, historically, climate change public engagement efforts have focused primarily on the environmental dimensions of the threat. These efforts have mobilized an important but still relatively narrow range of the public and policy makers. In contrast, the public health community holds the potential to engage a broader range of people, thereby enhancing climate change understanding and decision-making capacity among members of the public, the business community, and government officials. Third, many of the actions that slow or prevent climate change, and that protect human health from the harms associated with climate change, also benefit health and well-being in ways unrelated to climate change. These “cobenefits” to societal action on climate change include reduced air and water pollution, increased physical activity and decreased obesity, reduced motor-vehicle–related injuries and death, increased social capital in and connections across communities, and reduced levels of depression. Therefore, from a public health perspective, actions taken to address climate change are a “win-win” in that in addition to responsibly addressing climate change, they can help improve public health and well-being in other ways as well. Over the past half decade, U.S.-based researchers have been investigating the factors that shape public views about the health risks associated with climate change, the communication strategies that motivate support for actions to reduce these risks, and the practical implications for public health organizations and professionals who seek to effectively engage individuals and their communities. This research serves as a model for similar work that can be conducted across country settings and international publics. Until only recently, the voices of public health experts have been largely absent from the public dialogue on climate change, a dialogue that is often erroneously framed as an “economy versus the environment” debate. Introducing the public health voice into the public dialogue can help communities see the issue in a new light, motivating and promoting more thoughtful decision making.

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>

scholarly journals The Precis Caribbean Story: Lessons and Legacies

2013 ◽  
Vol 94 (7) ◽  
pp. 1065-1073 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Taylor ◽  
Abel Centella ◽  
John Charlery ◽  
Arnoldo Bezanilla ◽  
Jayaka Campbell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Climate Change Information ◽  
Current Century ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Regional Climates ◽  
Science Information

By the beginning of the current century, there was heightened recognition that the Caribbean is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Yet, there was very little climate change science information for the region and at the scale of the small islands that make up most of the region. To fill the gap, a group of regional scientists representing three institutions and four territories (Barbados, Belize, Cuba, and Jamaica) initiated a project to provide dynamically downscaled climate change information for the Caribbean. The Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS)-Caribbean initiative was premised on a shared workload with goals to build regional capacity to provide climate change information for the region from within the region, to provide much needed climate information in the shortest possible time frame, and to create a platform for sharing the information as widely as possible. Ten years later offers the opportunity for retrospection and evaluation, particularly since a phase 2 initiative is being formulated. By both accident and design, the legacies of the PRECIS-Caribbean initiative include i) the positioning of the Caribbean to pose and answer for itself some of the emerging second-generation climate change questions; ii) the emergence of a regional template for capacity building in the sciences through cooperation; iii) an expanded regional capacity to undertake climate science; and iv) a significant body of climate change and climate science knowledge relevant to and at the scale of the Caribbean region.

Oxford Textbook of Nature and Public Health

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Urban Trees ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Vector Borne ◽  
Multiple Health ◽  
Health And Well Being

Much literature on environmental health has described threats from the environment. The Oxford Textbook of Nature and Public Health: The Role of Nature in Improving the Health of a Population focuses on the role of nature for our health and well-being by demonstrating how we can gain multiple health benefits from nature, and how much we risk losing by destroying our surrounding natural environment. Providing a broad and inclusive picture of the multifaceted relation between human health and natural environments, the books covers all aspects of this relationship ranging from disease prevention; through physical activity in green spaces, to ecosystem services like climate change adaptation by urban trees preventing heat stress in hot climates. Nature’s potential hazardous consequences are also discussed including natural disasters, vector-borne pathogens, and allergies.

scholarly journals Caring for the Earth for Better Health and Well-being of All: Addressing Climate Change as a Planetary Health Emergency

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
James Hospedales
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Planetary Health ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Health And Well Being

Most of the major public health problems with which I have wrestled in my life – epidemics and pandemics, natural disasters, chronic noncommunicable diseases, are all symptomatic of, or related to, climate change and/or destruction of the environment. As a Christian, the roots lie in lack of respect for our Creator, and lack of reverence for the goodness and inter-dependence of all of creation.

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