Resilience

Image

Together our powerful network will transform the health sector — ensuring it can balance the immediate needs for mitigation, resilience, and equity, while serving as a leader in the broader shift to a just, low-carbon economy.

Climate change is a threat multiplier for all social and environmental factors that contribute to disease and widen inequality.

Health care is at the epicenter of pandemics, climate disasters, and other public health emergencies. These crises highlight the deeply rooted connection between health care, community health, equity, and resilience. These crises individually and collectively have a disproportionate impact on people of color and reveal significant health and socioeconomic disparities within our communities.

Image

Our definition includes a combination of climate adaptation and social resilience strategies that focus on: 

1. Health care facility resilience

2. Public infrastructure resilience

3. Community health resilience

Alongside mitigation efforts and proactive leadership, all of these dimensions are needed to fully address the current and future impacts of climate change in a holistic, integrated, and effective way. 

Our vision for the future

We see a future with healthy people living in equitable, resilient communities on a thriving planet. This is a future in which all communities are prepared for the shocks and stressors of the climate crisis, with uninterrupted access to health services during extreme weather events. 

We envision health systems building physical, social, and economic conditions to support community health and well-being, harnessing the enormous economic power and influence of the health care sector to move beyond emergency care toward healing the harm that exists today in the form of ecological degradation, health vulnerabilities, and economic disparities. 

To achieve this vision, hospitals must break down internal silos, while building and repairing trust with communities by acting with greater humility, inclusion, and true partner engagement.