Certain People and Places are More Affected
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Climate change will affect everyone, but certain people and certain places will be affected more than others:
- Some people are more exposed to climate-related health impacts, such as extreme heat, flooding from extreme weather events, and tickborne diseases. These include outdoor workers and hobbyists, homeless people, people living in flood plains, or people living on upper stories of buildings in urban areas (which can be especially hot in summer).
- Others may have increased health risk due to age (the elderly, babies, and children), having a chronic or pre-existing medical condition, or being on certain medications.
- Even people in good current health but lacking economic, social, or political resources may have less ability than others to reduce their risks, prevent impacts from occurring, and recover from impacts when they occur.
It is critical to identify individuals and communities that may be particularly affected by climate-related health impacts, and to take actions to ensure that they do not suffer disproportionately from climate impacts. For example, a home-bound elderly person living alone may be especially at risk during a heat wave or extreme weather event. Learn more about how climate change affects health
Below are resources to help you learn more about how to identify and address affected populations. Learn more about environmental justice and public health.
| Resource | Description |
|---|---|
| Climate Change and Human Health: Who's Most at Risk? | This page from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlines how climate change affects the health of specific populations, including children, indigenous people, those with chronic medical conditions or disabilities, workers and pregnant people. |
| Tools for Community Planners | Tools to help planners understand community-level strengths and vulnerabilities, including the Vermont Social and Heat Vulnerability Indexes. |
| Assessing Health Vulnerability to Climate Change: A Guide for Health Departments | This guide uses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) framework to help health departments prepare for and respond to climate change. |
| Climate Change and Health Playbook | The Climate Change and Health Playbook: Adaptation Planning for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is designed to support the work of state, local, territorial and tribal health services across the nation in embedding justice, equity, diversity and inclusion into their climate and resilience initiatives, programs and operations. |
| Assess Vulnerability & Risk | This resource from the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit presents a plotting tool to characterize risk and help communities come to a decision point. |
| Climate Change, Health, and Equity: A Guide for Local Health Departments | The guide includes overviews of climate science, health impacts of climate change and how health equity fits into the equation. |
| Community Resilience Assessment | This assessment from Community Resilience Organizations has you score factors of resilience across five main topics to help you understand your community's vulnerabilities and strengths. |