Closing the gap between knowledge and practice: implementation science priorities for health adaptation for climate change. Workshop hosted by NIH, as part of the annual meeting of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH)
Implementation science plays an important role in optimizing evidence-based interventions for complex public health challenges. Recent experiences with the COVID pandemic and concurrent climate-related natural disasters have revealed challenges in national-level emergency preparedness, risk communication, determining optimal public health measures in response to concurrent risks, and then assuring compliance with those measures. The public health community is building experience with the development and implementation of early warning systems for natural disasters and climate-sensitive diseases; in addition, involvement of health ministries and health systems in national and state level climate adaptation planning is increasing. These experiences and projects afford a valuable opportunity to take stock of implementation challenges and design research and analysis to improve understanding of how to design adaptation programs and assure their successful implementation. This session will open with a series of informative lectures on climate health adaptation and implementation science, followed by case descriptions of specific initiatives. It will then move to discussions on implementation science challenges and priority research topics. Using facilitation and polling, potential priority topics will be identified.