Enhancing Climate Fluency and Health Equity in Northeastern NC
Since the fall of 2021, the C3HE team has been collaborating with Albemarle Regional Health Services (ARHS) on climate and health-related projects.
The goals of this partnership include:
assessing the needs of the community
identifying linkages between climate and health stressors (e.g., harmful algal blooms, heat, and drought)
developing a communication and response plan
Key project activities include:
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We have produced and distributed educational materials on harmful algal blooms in order to increase public awareness and promote public reporting of possible algal bloom sightings on the North Carolina Division of Water Resources website.
Materials available for download:
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We have designed and distributed a climate fluency survey among ARHS staff to understand how public health leaders are currently thinking about and incorporating climate change into their work. We will use these survey results to inform a train-the-trainer session this fall so that ARHS staff can serve as trusted messengers to doctors, pharmacists, and other public health officials.
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We created and distributed weather-climate education kits to increase capacity of local K-12 schools to teach weather and climate and to support regional climate literacy.
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We have distributed 25 precipitation gauges to augment environmental monitoring efforts, such as monitoring of mosquito populations, and to engage community members in making precipitation observations. These observers are reporting to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) and have increased the density of observations in rural Northeastern North Carolina.
