Prepare With Us on World Environmental Health Day
September 26, 2024
The 2024 World Environmental Health Day theme is, 鈥淓nvironmental Health: Creating Resilient Communities Through Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation.鈥� To amplify this important message, we are promoting tools and resources to support the environmental health workforce to prepare for and respond to disasters and the impacts of climate change.
The environmental health workforce is on the front line of protecting communities from the environmental and health impacts associated with changes to our climate every day. These highly trained scientists protect vulnerable communities from environmental health risks and contribute to the overall well-being of individuals, families, and businesses by ensuring that communities have clean air, safe food and water, and healthy environments to live, work, and play in.
In partnership with this vital workforce, we continue to identify and develop solutions to assist the profession to prepare, respond, and recover in the face of complex impacts to our environment such as wildfires, floods, pandemics, and more. Below is a selection of our current and upcoming resources and tools.
- Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Resource Hubs: A collection of resources for environmental health professionals to use to prepare, mitigate, respond, and recover from natural and human-made emergencies and disasters. The repository includes resources developed by state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments, academic institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and governmental agencies to facilitate knowledge sharing across jurisdictions.
- Draft Environmental Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capability Framework: Supports public health agencies to formally integrate environmental public health into their emergency preparedness, response, and recovery planning and coordination activities. It also serves to more clearly define the roles and responsibilities of cross-sector partner organizations, further strengthening emergency management across the public health system.
- : Intended for environmental public health professionals responding to a wildfire as part of an immediate response or recovery process. The guide provides information needed in the event of a wildfire within a jurisdiction, with potential considerations and roles for environmental public health professionals.
- Climate and Health Adaptation and Mitigation Program (CHAMP): Encourages local jurisdictions to progress toward meeting Healthy People 2030 objectives, promotes health equity by raising awareness of how environmental health hazards associated with climate change disproportionately impact the health of various communities and population groups, and helps to advance CDC's Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) framework.
Coming Up
- Disaster Readiness Simulator: Simulator enables organizations to accurately test and understand their emergency response capabilities and human resource capacities.
About World Environmental Health Day
The has declared September 26 each year as World Environmental Health Day.