HHS invests in strategies to mitigate the impacts of environmental factors, including climate change, on health outcomes. HHS detects, investigates, forecasts, monitors, responds to, prevents, and aids in recovery from environmental and hazardous public health threats and their health effects. HHS promotes cross-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder coordination to improve the outcomes of climate change and environmental exposures on workers, communities, and domestic and international systems. Additionally, HHS expands awareness and increases knowledge of environmental hazards and actions that individuals and communities can take to reduce negative health outcomes. Below is a selection of strategies HHS is implementing.
In the context of HHS, this Strategic Plan adopts the definition of underserved populations listed in Executive Order 13985: Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through the Federal Government to refer to “populations sharing a particular characteristic, as well as geographic communities, who have been systematically denied a full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social, and civic life”; this definition includes individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment, such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality. Individuals may belong to more than one underserved community and face intersecting barriers.
Contributing OpDivs and StaffDivs
ASPR, ATSDR, CDC, CMS, FDA, HRSA, IHS, NIH, OASH, OCR, and OGA work to achieve this objective.
Strategies
Expand ability to predict, monitor, prevent, respond to, and recover from health impacts of environmental changes and threats, utilizing a One Health approach
- Develop, use, and evaluate analytical, prevention and control tools and models to accurately forecast, prepare for, mitigate, and adapt to environmental and occupational hazards or climate change impacts, including those related to the agricultural ecosystem that have public health implications, including the effects of wind, rainfall, drought, and fire and the impacts on animal populations, the microbial make-up of soil and water, and land use.
- Expand disease surveillance systems, environmental health data collection, and predictive modeling capabilities, and integrate such environmental health data with data from other scientific disciplines (e.g. geoscience, agricultural, land use, animal sciences, and behavioral and social science) to detect changes in risk, incidence, and distribution over time, including environmental impacts on workers and industries, and underserved communities.
- Conduct and support research on the impacts of current and emerging environmental exposures, risk factors, environmental and hazardous public health threats, and climate change to increase understanding of health outcomes on individuals and communities at the national and international level.
- Facilitate research, collaboration, and implementation efforts between public and private healthcare system stakeholders to make healthcare delivery more environmentally sustainable and more resilient to the threats of natural disasters, including extreme weather events, thereby reducing costs and risks from disruption of healthcare operations.
- Translate research findings into the adoption of health policies and evidence-based strategies to prevent environmental and climate change exposures, address health inequities, prepare for and adapt to health risks, and improve health outcomes.
- Enhance collaborations with federal partners and international agriculture, environmental and other sector entities to better address recurring and anticipated issues associated with food production, safety, and availability, food-related disease and mortality, including under-nutrition, infectious and non-communicable diseases, and diarrheal- and vector borne diseases and maternal and child health.
Promote coordination among sectors and levels of government and multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approaches to protect people from health threats arising from climate change and environmental and occupational exposures
- Support multidisciplinary teams, prioritizing engagement of community stakeholders in affected communities at all stages of environmental and climate change health research and program implementation, to develop intervention strategies and gain understanding of the factors that make those strategies successful and replicable.
- Establish partnerships with federal agencies, state, local, territorial health departments, tribal nations, academic institutions, and community- and faith-based organizations, leveraging environmental health expertise and local capabilities, to conduct environmental, occupational, and climate change health research, build the capacity of impacted communities, and implement programming to reduce the health risks of environmental hazards.
Expand awareness and knowledge of environmental and occupational hazards to inform actions individuals and communities can take to reduce negative health outcomes
- Build networks and develop tools to educate health providers, employers, workers, and communities about the environmental hazards, including climate change, that impact their local health outcomes and actions to mitigate and manage those impacts.
- Develop and sustain formal and informal collaborations within and across HHS Divisions, other federal agencies, global health entities, and a wide range of partners to address environmental threats and climate change.
