Reimagining the Role of Health Departments and Their Partners in Addressing Climate Change: Revising the Building Resilience against Climate Effects (BRACE) Framework

Stephenie C. Lemon (), Heather A. Joseph, Samantha Williams, Claudia Brown, Semra Aytur, Katherine Catalano, Stacey Chacker, Karin V. Goins, Linda Rudolph, Sandra Whitehead, Sara Zimmerman and Paul J. Schramm
Additional contact information
Stephenie C. Lemon: Prevention Research Center, UMass Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655, USA
Heather A. Joseph: Climate and Health Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA
Samantha Williams: Climate and Health Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA
Claudia Brown: Climate and Health Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA
Semra Aytur: Department of Health Management and Policy, College of Health and Human Services, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA
Katherine Catalano: Center for Climate, Health and Equity, American Public Health Association, Washington, DC 20001, USA
Stacey Chacker: Health Resources in Action, Boston, MA 02116, USA
Karin V. Goins: Prevention Research Center, UMass Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655, USA
Linda Rudolph: Center for Climate Change and Health, Public Health Institute, Oakland, CA 94607, USA
Sandra Whitehead: College of Professional Studies, Sustainable Urban Planning Program, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA
Sara Zimmerman: Climate Equity Policy Center, Berkeley, CA 94702, USA
Paul J. Schramm: Climate and Health Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 15, 1-12

Abstract: Public health departments have important roles to play in addressing the local health impacts of climate change, yet are often not well prepared to do so. The Climate and Health Program (CHP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created the Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) framework in 2012 as a five-step planning framework to support public health departments and their partners to respond to the health impacts of climate change. CHP has initiated a process to revise the framework to address learnings from a decade of experience with BRACE and advances in the science and practice of addressing climate and health. The aim of this manuscript is to describe the methodology for revising the BRACE framework and the expected outputs of this process. Development of the revised framework and associated guidance and tools will be guided by a multi-sector expert panel, and finalization will be informed by usability testing. Planned revisions to BRACE will (1) be consistent with the vision of Public Health 3.0 and position health departments as “chief health strategists” in their communities, who are responsible for facilitating the establishment and maintenance of cross-sector collaborations with community organizations, other partners, and other government agencies to address local climate impacts and prevent further harm to historically underserved communities; (2) place health equity as a central, guiding tenet; (3) incorporate greenhouse gas mitigation strategies, in addition to its previous focus on climate adaptation; and (4) feature a new set of tools to support BRACE implementation among a diverse set of users. The revised BRACE framework and the associated tools will support public health departments and their partners as they strive to prevent and reduce the negative health impacts of climate change for everyone, while focusing on improving health equity.

Keywords: climate; health departments; mitigation; adaptation; community engagement; equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/15/6447/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/15/6447/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:15:p:6447-:d:1202806

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().