BACKGROUND Climate change affects human health, and health departments are urged to act to reduce the severity of these impacts. Yet little is known about the perspective of public health nurses--the largest component of the public health workforce--regarding their roles in addressing health impacts of climate change. OBJECTIVES We determined the knowledge and attitudes of public health nurse...

BACKGROUND Within an Australian context, the medium to long-term health impacts of climate change are likely to be wide, varied and amplify many existing disorders and health inequities. How the health system responds to these challenges will be best considered in the context of existing health facilities and services. This paper provides a snapshot of the understanding that Australian health p...

OBJECTIVES Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a systematic approach to identifying, describing, evaluating and reporting on the environmental - and health - effects of policies, plans and strategies. SEAs have potential to improve population health because they assess 'upstream' health determinants and recommend measures to improve these. The authors studied the range of health issues ...

BACKGROUND Prospective health impact assessment is a new approach to predicting potential health impacts of policies, programmes or projects. It has been widely recognized that public policies have important impacts on health. In 1997, the Liverpool Public Health Observatory was commissioned to carry out a health impact assessment of the Merseyside Integrated Transport Strategy (MerITS). A seco...

BACKGROUND The European Commission has an Impact Assessment (IA) procedure that aims to inform decision-makers of the all important impacts that decisions may have. This article studies how health is considered in the IA procedure and how it is reflected in the reports: what aspects, whose and simply in what context health is mentioned in the IA reports. METHODS Half of the Commissions IAs fr...

BACKGROUND Climate change affects human health in various ways. Health planners and policy makers are increasingly addressing potential health impacts of climate change. Ethiopia is vulnerable to these impacts. Assessing students' knowledge, understanding and perception about the health impact of climate change may promote educational endeavors to increase awareness of health impacts linked to ...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate health impacts of drought during the most severe drought in California's recorded history with a rapid assessment method. METHODS We conducted Community Assessments for Public Health Emergency Response during October through November 2015 in Tulare County and Mariposa County to evaluate household water access, acute stressors, exacerbations of chronic diseases and behav...