Making Connections between Public Health and Climate

Communities need to be prepared for health impacts related to climate change and extreme events. CLIMAS researchers established a long-term partnership with the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) to provide expertise on several climate-related health risks. This partnership has resulted in several important impacts, the first of which was the use of CLIMAS research in Arizona’s Climate and Health Adaptation Plan (2017) and its addendum (2018).

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, health departments across Arizona had to redirect most of their effort toward disease mitigation. The established partnership between CLIMAS and the ADHS allowed for heat resilience work to move forward while counties focused on the pandemic. CLIMAS researchers assessed the use of cooling centers and monitored heat temperatures at outdoor testing and vaccination sites. Results and suggestions were shared with county health departments to keep health workers and the public safe from heat exposure. Finally, in response to a 2020 heat wave, CLIMAS researchers created Maps of Cooling Centers in Tucson to help people to find cooling stations, which were used by Pima Association of Governments, Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness, and Chicanos Por La Causa.

"There's a reliance on academic partnerships when health departments don’t have the staff available to do the work. The partnership [between CLIMAS and ADHS] was really helpful…because ADHS had someone to rely on when they couldn’t move [an initiative] forward."
– Matt Roach, Arizona Department of Health Services

CLIMAS Lead: Heidi Brown

Research Team: Erika Austhof, Ladd Keith, Dan Ferguson, Julie Jernberg

Partners: Arizona Department of Health Services

Publications and Reports

Watkins, L., Brown, H. E., Keith, L., Austhof, E., Lin, H., Chambers, S. N., Tabor, J., Gettel, A., & Guardaro, M. (2024). A co‐produced workflow for addressing inequities in cooling center access. Community Science, 3(4), e2023CSJ000038. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023CSJ000038

Chambers, S. N., Brown, H. E., Keith, L., & Austhof, E.. (2023). Development of a geographic human heat balance equation to support public health analyses: An Arizona urban sun corridor application. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, 32, 101009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2023.101009

Austhof, E., & Brown, H. E.. (2021). Flexibility and partnerships perceived as supportive of dual hazard response: COVID-19 and heat related illness, Summer 2020. The Journal of Climate Change and Health, 4, 100068. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2021.100068

Austhof, E., Anderson, C., Berisha, V., Gettel, A., Domsky, I., Brown, A. F., Hondula, D. M., Brown, H. E., & Nguyen, H. (2020). Gap Analysis of Climate and Health Research in Arizona.

Austhof, E., Berisha, V., McMahan, B., Owen, G., Keith, L., Roach, M., & Brown, H. E.. (2020). Participation and Engagement of Public Health Stakeholders in Climate and Health Adaptation. Atmosphere, 11(3), 265. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11030265

Roach, M., Austhof, E., Berisha, V., Brown, H. E., Carr, D., Harlow-Smith, L., Hondula, D., & Snyder, K. (2018). Addendum to the Arizona Climate and Health Adaptation Plan.

Roach, M., Barrett, E., Brown, H. E., Dufour, B., Hondula, D. M., Putnam, H., & Sosa, B. (2017). Arizona’s Climate and Health Adaptation Plan 2017.