The World Health Organization has called on the health care sector to prepare for climate change impacts through efforts to increase resiliency. Health care organisations in Canada can increase resiliency by continually mainstreaming climate change into risk assessments, considering climate change when developing plans and activities and engaging in broader community discussions and initiatives around climate-related issues. For example, health care and public health professionals and staff, can prepare for climate change by assessing risks from extreme weather events, readiness to manage climate-related infectious disease outbreaks or atypical cases and increasing understanding of how gradual shifts in weather can affect risk profiles. Health care facilities can reduce risks of climate change through proper management of critical resources (e.g. pharmaceuticals, food, transportation, medical supplies and equipment) based on climate change considerations. A resilient health care facility is also one that commits to sustainable practices, such as water and energy conservation, promoting active transportation, and local food procurement. In investing in resiliency activities in these areas, health care facilities can reduce operating costs and increase resilience in the community.
The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care with support from the Nova Scotia Department of Environment and Health Canada has co-developed a Health Care Facility Climate Change Resiliency Toolkit that health care facilities can use to assess their resiliency to climate change. The toolkit includes a checklist with questions in many areas, such as: emergency management, facilities management, health care services and supply chain management. Completion of the assessment checklists by officials with knowledge and experience in these areas will increase awareness and inform resiliency activities.
Using the online assessment checklist
Confidentiality of your data:
When you login to the online checklist, individual facility data will remain confidential to you. You can save this data online and use it to help benchmark yourself against and to monitor progress at your facility over time. Once there are more facilities using this tool, there will be an opportunity to benchmark against other facilities. The Coalition will summarize general data and provide the generalized benchmark, and may from time-to-time provide a general update on the responses to date for the health care community.
How your participation helps:
By using this online checklist your facility will be part of a growing community of health care facilities who are better preparing themselves for climate change induced disasters by:
- Understanding what their current risks are and how prepared their facility is
- Learning what other facilities are doing to become better prepared
- Helping their facility to become better prepared
Your use of the online checklist will also:
- Facilitate the National discussion on health care facility readiness for the impacts of climate change
- Help identify deficiencies in the checklist
- Improve the scorecard
- Help identify additional support needs
For further information on the toolkit, please contact:
