Massachusetts Surveys Climate Readiness of Public Health
Departments

©'epa.gov/arc-x/massachusetts-surveys-climate-reacliness-public-health-departments

Climate change threatens human health through a variety of pathways including more
frequent extreme weather events, decreased air quality, and increased spread of vector-
borne diseases. Massachusetts, recognizing this risk, surveyed its local boards of public
health to gauge the state's level of public health preparedness for climate change. The
Massachusetts Department of Health was interested in the local boards' current
understanding, level of preparedness, and response capabilities for projected climate
change risks. The survey covered surveillance, planning, and intervention activities
associated with heat stress, hazardous weather events, indoor air quality, food
supply/agricultural issues, vector-borne diseases, and water quality issues. The survey
helped identify communities that may be more vulnerable to projected climate change
risks. State and local communities can use this knowledge to increase resiliency and
adaptive capacity by more effectively guiding and targeting resources and actions to
vulnerable health departments.

How Did They Do It?	Applicable EPA Tools

Q b b h

Massachusetts Public Health Survey
Report Cover.

Assessed the state public
health system's current
perceived capacity to deal with
projected climate risks

•	The Massachusetts
Department of Health
worked with the regional
coordinators of the five
Massachusetts public
health regions and the 15
Emergency Preparedness
Regional Coalitions to
survey the 351
municipalities in the
commonwealth.

•	Less than a quarter (24%)
of responding health
departments identified
climate change
preparations as a priority,
yet only a fifth (21%) felt
they had adequate
resources to address
climate risks.

CDC's Health Vulnerability: Climate Change
Guide For Health Departments helps
communities assess capacity and vulnerability to
climate risks.

Health Vulnerability: Climate Change Guide For
Health Departments

* (This is a non-EPA resource from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.)

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How Did They Do It?	Applicable EPA Tools

•	Only a small minority of
respondents identified and
systematically tracked
many of the threats
projected to be
exacerbated by climate
change such as indoor and
outdoor air quality,
respiratory conditions, and
extreme heat.

•	Half the respondents
identified current efforts to
increase resiliency to
extreme heat events, such
as having developed or in
the process of developing
plans for siting cooling
centers for operation during
heat events.

Identified knowledge gaps on

vulnerable populations

•	The majority of health
departments focused
vulnerable population
outreach to the elderly, and
to a much lesser extent,
those with mobility
challenges; outside of those
two vulnerable populations,
outreach was infrequent.

•	The Department of Health
report highlighted a lack of
outreach and knowledge
gap of vulnerable
populations as a key issue
to help increase adaptive
capacity of local health
departments.

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EPA's EJ Screen combines environmental and
demographic indicators to help highlight places
that may be vulnerable to human health impacts
on climate change (example demographic
indicators include elderly, extremely young, low-
income, linguistically isolated communities) and
may warrant further review as environmental
justice communities.

EJ Screen

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How Did They Do It?

Applicable EPA Tools

Prepared a final report with	EPA's Climate Impacts on Health Page provides

recommended steps to	information to better increase knowledge of the

increase public health system's expected human health risks from climate

adaptive capacity

change.

• The Department of Public Climate Impacts on Health Page

Health "should create
region-specific vulnerability
maps identifying and
quantifying specific
environmental and public
health threats".

• The survey can be used in
combination with
Massachusetts'

Environmental Public
Health Data Tracking
(EPHT) portal to help
communities better prepare
for future health impacts.

° Massachusetts'

Environmental Public
Health Data Tracking
(EPHT) portal Exit

Similar Cases and More Information

Massachusetts acknowledged that while the survey has helped identify prospective vulnerabilities, they are unable to tie this
data to projected vulnerabilities without further research. To see an example of how a community has identified projected
public health vulnerabilities, see the Minnesota Climate Health case study. To see an example of specific steps to reduce
vulnerabilities and adapt to changing conditions, view Chicago's Adaptation to Extreme Heat Events, or for how to increase
adaptive capacity of vulnerable populations, view Chicago's Heat Emergency Response.

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