Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Rainwater harvesting design techniques are heralded as tools for building a sustainable community and resilience against climate change impacts. When rainwater harvesting strategies fall into disrepair or are designed improperly, they may inadvertently become sources of mosquitoes. We hypothesize that well-maintained green infrastructure design strategies have the greatest impact on conservation while limiting the negative consequences of mosquitoes. If green infrastructure is to be used as an adaptation technique, then it is important to better understand when it works best. Partnering with Tucson Water, which is responsible for some green infrastructure installation and Pima County Vector control represents two key stakeholders in addressing whether this is maladaptation.

As part of the Climate-Ready States and Cities Initiative in 2009, the CDC engaged 16 states and two large cities to implement a five-step program Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE). The CDC is now supporting the monitoring and evaluation of the efforts developed under BRACE: Climate and Health Adaptation Monitoring Program (CHAMP). To support these monitoring and evaluation efforts, this project seeks to quantify the scope of BRACE initiatives through a national survey, which will be distributed in Summer 2020. ADHS has helped design this survey. Results will be reported to ADHS and the CDC. CLIMAS investigators are also working to map the Arizona network of climate/health advocates and to identify knowledge gaps about climate and health connections. This information is informing adaptation and mitigation plans for the state of Arizona as well as Pinal and Maricopa County’s Implementation and Monitoring Strategies.

Extreme heat is already a key public health risk in the adjacent cities of El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Las Cruces, New Mexico. Projected temperature changes, combined with the urban heat island effect and regional poverty, expose urban areas with high vulnerabilities to heat-health risks.

The proposed initiative aims to increase preparedness and capacity to adapt to extreme high temperatures and heat waves in Rio Grande-Bravo Basin border cities by: a) identifying key heat health parameters and target populations for heat health early warning; b) assessing and developing capacity for coordinated heat health early warning; c) facilitating the sharing of best practices; and d) initiating development toward a community of practice within a network of regional cities.

Importance: This project explicitly connects CLIMAS with the NOAA-CDC National Integrated Heat Health Information System initiative and with an international network of similar projects aimed at implementing the Global Framework for Climate Services.

Additonal Information:

Project website

July 2016 Workshop Report Executive Summary: English Español

In a changing climate, estimating future disease risk may inform adaptation planning. The abundance (how many) and distribution (where they occur) of mosquitoes are dictated by the climate they experience. Projecting vector-borne disease burden requires quantitative estimates of how the vectors, hosts, and virus currently respond to climate stressors and estimates of how they will respond and adapt to future climate stressors. Most of the work in projecting future vector-borne disease risk is there for limited to the expected responses of the vector (i.e., modeling entomologic risk rather than disease occurrence) because vectors can be reared in the laboratory under constant temperatures and their development rates recorded.

Phase 1 of this project included conducting a vulnerability assessment for Arizona residents to climate change related impacts from vector borne diseases and Valley Fever. This effort supported the Arizona Department of Health Services Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) program.

In Phase 2, we are applying future climate to the empirically derived development rates, to project future vector abundance. By limiting the discussion to changes in entomologic risk, we focus on the piece of the puzzle with the most quantitative data available. While tools exist to confidently model mosquito abundance in response to climate, without being able to model human behavior, we are still limited in being able to predict changes in disease risk.