Arizona Department of Health Services

As part of the Climate-Ready States and Cities Initiative, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) engaged 16 states and two large cities to implement a five-step program called Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) in 2009. The program aimed to help communities prepare for the health effects of climate change. As that project ends, the CDC is now supporting the monitoring and evaluation of the efforts developed under BRACE in a new effort called the Climate and Health Adaptation Monitoring Program (CHAMP). To support these monitoring and evaluation efforts, investigators are working to map the Arizona network of climate/health advocates, to identify gaps stakeholders need regarding the climate-health connection, and to develop strategies to better support these efforts.

As part of the Climate-Ready States and Cities Initiative in 2009, the CDC engaged 16 states and two large cities to implement a five-step program Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE). The CDC is now supporting the monitoring and evaluation of the efforts developed under BRACE: Climate and Health Adaptation Monitoring Program (CHAMP). To support these monitoring and evaluation efforts, this project seeks to quantify the scope of BRACE initiatives through a national survey, which will be distributed in Summer 2020. ADHS has helped design this survey. Results will be reported to ADHS and the CDC. CLIMAS investigators are also working to map the Arizona network of climate/health advocates and to identify knowledge gaps about climate and health connections. This information is informing adaptation and mitigation plans for the state of Arizona as well as Pinal and Maricopa County’s Implementation and Monitoring Strategies.

In a changing climate, estimating future disease risk may inform adaptation planning. The abundance (how many) and distribution (where they occur) of mosquitoes are dictated by the climate they experience. Projecting vector-borne disease burden requires quantitative estimates of how the vectors, hosts, and virus currently respond to climate stressors and estimates of how they will respond and adapt to future climate stressors. Most of the work in projecting future vector-borne disease risk is there for limited to the expected responses of the vector (i.e., modeling entomologic risk rather than disease occurrence) because vectors can be reared in the laboratory under constant temperatures and their development rates recorded.

Phase 1 of this project included conducting a vulnerability assessment for Arizona residents to climate change related impacts from vector borne diseases and Valley Fever. This effort supported the Arizona Department of Health Services Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) program.

In Phase 2, we are applying future climate to the empirically derived development rates, to project future vector abundance. By limiting the discussion to changes in entomologic risk, we focus on the piece of the puzzle with the most quantitative data available. While tools exist to confidently model mosquito abundance in response to climate, without being able to model human behavior, we are still limited in being able to predict changes in disease risk.

Climate change and variability can strongly control the population dynamics of disease vectors such as mosquitoes, altering their location and seasonality and possibly increasing the risk of disease transmission to humans. This project develops and implements a climate-based Dynamic Mosquito Simulation Model to understand and project climate effects on mosquito population dynamics and associated implications for public health, developing results that will help climate-health scientists and public health decision makers better understand and project the role of climate in actual disease cases.