The Kresge Foundation
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Evaluation of Climate Change and Public Health Learning Collaborative for Urban Health Departments Prepared for The Kresge Foundation by Center for Climate Change & Health Public Health Institute Oakland, CA http://climatehealthconnect.org 2/1/2018 Table of Contents Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................... i I. Background ................................................................................................................................ 1 Context and Goals ..................................................................................................................... 1 The Kresge Learning Collaborative for Local Health Departments ....................................... 1 Outreach and Application Review .......................................................................................... 2 Description of the Applicants ..................................................................................................... 5 Prior Efforts ............................................................................................................................. 17 Other Contextual Issues .......................................................................................................... 21 Overview of the Learning Collaborative Process .................................................................... 21 CCCH Staffing of the Learning Collaborative ...................................................................... 21 Communications .................................................................................................................. 24 Evaluation ............................................................................................................................ 24 In-Person Meetings .............................................................................................................. 25 II. Projects Synthesis .................................................................................................................. 33 Local Health Department Integration ....................................................................................... 33 Local Health Department Capacity Building ............................................................................ 35 Health Equity and Community Engagement ........................................................................... 36 Challenges .............................................................................................................................. 36 Lessons Learned ..................................................................................................................... 37 III. Evaluation of CCCH ............................................................................................................... 41 LHDs Feedback on the Role of CCCH as the Learning Collaborative Sponsor ..................... 44 IV. Recommendations and Next Steps ....................................................................................... 46 V. Individual Health Departments ............................................................................................... 48 A. Philadelphia Department of Public Health .......................................................................... 48 B. Tulsa City-County Health Department ................................................................................ 59 C. Macomb County Health Department .................................................................................. 68 D. Columbus Public Health ..................................................................................................... 77 E. Minneapolis Department of Public Health ........................................................................... 84 F. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health .............................................................. 95 G. Denver Department of Public Health and Environment .................................................... 104 H. Maricopa County Department of Public Health ................................................................ 113 I. Multnomah County Health Department .............................................................................. 121 J. New Orleans Health Department ....................................................................................... 132 K. City of Milwaukee Health Department ............................................................................... 142 L. Seattle-King County Public Health ................................................................................... 151 Appendix A. Integrating Climate and Health into Local Health Department Programs ......... 161 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Background Climate change is the greatest public health challenge of the twenty-first century. Local public health departments have a crucial role to play in addressing climate change in their local jurisdictions. Yet, there is a significant void of support from state and federal health agencies for comprehensive local public health responses. Lack of budgetary resources, lack of expertise, and issue polarization appear to contribute to this inaction.1 To address this gap, the Center for Climate Change and Health (CCCH) at the Public Health Institute organized a "Learning Collaborative for Urban Local Health Departments" (LC) funded by the Kresge Foundation. CCCH's broad goals for the learning collaborative were to: • Support LHDs to demonstrate a variety of ways in which urban local public health departments can develop, integrate, scale-up and replicate approaches that simultaneously address climate change, community health and vulnerable populations, and health equity. • Demonstrate approaches that successfully build capacity to incorporate climate change into local public health department program practice and/or enhance local public health department participation in on-going local and regional climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience work. Process and Structure of the Learning Collaborative Eligibility was restricted to local health departments (LHDs) serving urban jurisdictions (cities or counties) with a population of 350,000 or more. Over 24 months (January 2016 to December 2017), LHDs were required to develop their own project and participate in bimonthly interactive consultation, bimonthly webinars, peer-to peer training, resource sharing, reflection, two 2-day in-person meetings, and evaluation organized by the CCCH sponsor. LHDs had broad discretion to choose their project as long as they addressed slowing (mitigation) and/or preparing (adaptation/resilience) for climate change. LHDs were encouraged to specifically address health equity, integrate community engagement, and build climate and health capacity across multiple LHD programs. To support and incentivize participation, CCCH offered small grants of up to $40,000 over two years per awardee. Description of Awardees and Their Projects Thirteen health departments responded to a formal request for proposals and received awards (Table 1): i Table 1. Local Health Departments in the Learning Collaborative 1. Columbus Public Health (Ohio) worked with faith-based organizations to share information about climate change and health in the African American and Hispanic communities and identified strategies to assist congregations interested in taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase sustainability and resilience. Columbus Public Health also introduced a climate, sustainability, and health education module and climate resilience actions for elementary school students in several local schools. 2. City and County of Denver Department of Environmental Health (Colorado) initiated a Denver Neighborhood Climate and Health Vulnerability project. This project integrated public health data and climate science in a mapping tool that provided greater insight for governmental planning agencies and community-based organizations into the neighborhoods and populations most vulnerable to climate related health impacts. Additionally, the learning collaborative project informed the Health in All Policies work happening across sectors. 3. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH) (California) launched a new internal initiative to engage its programs in implementing LACDPH’s Five Point Plan to Reduce the Health Impacts of Climate Change. As a component of this work, LACDPH developed actions plans to address at least one element of the Five Point Plan, including an Extreme Heat Response Framework that enhances its preparedness for and response to extreme heat events. In conjunction with the development of the Five Point Plan, LACDPH convened a cross-departmental Climate Action Group that collaborated to action plans to implement the Five Point Plan. LACDPH also chaired a cross-sector workgroup to develop an urban heat island mitigation plan. 4. Macomb County Health Department (Michigan) formed a Climate Change Resiliency Coalition, which assessed the health and preparedness of residents devastated by a recent major flood, and incorporated the Coalition into the planning process of its community health needs assessment. 5. Maricopa County Department of Public Health (Arizona) identified the needs of homebound populations during extreme heat events, assessed the sufficiency of existing services, and created a broad community coalition of governmental agencies and community-based organizations to elevate the recognition