Health Department Awarded Building Resilience Against Climate Effects Mini Grant

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Cynthia Bodendein, Health Officer

The Sauk County Health Department was recently awarded a mini grant by Wisconsin Department of Health, Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) program to enhance capacity to assess, prepare for, and effectively respond to climate and extreme weather events and reduce or prevent related negative health effects. 

Sauk County’s mini grant will allow key stakeholders to work collaboratively over the course of one and a half years to develop a community engagement protocol to identify locally-relevant climate adaptation strategies that can be integrated into existing public health and emergency response planning mechanisms, and to create sustainable goals.

On Thursday February 4^th, 2016 over 40 key stakeholders met in Plain to learn about the BRACE framework and determine priorities and specific action steps to begin working collaboratively on. The stakeholders in attendance identified as the top four health outcomes to focus on:

• mental health,
• chronic disease and 
• injury,
• waterborne disease.

Specific action steps identified at the first meeting include:

• development of a community outreach and information campaign;
• identification of at risk populations,
• improving upon identification tools,
• creation of distribution tools for educational materials to at risk populations;
•  assist local communities in identifying their specific water issues.

The Wisconsin BRACE program has many tools and resources available for local communities and the general public on climate and health. Extreme weather toolkits, which provide one- to two-page guides that can be used by the public, local governments, health departments, and emergency response personnel, to better prepare Wisconsin residents for extreme weather events are publically available on the Wisconsin BRACE website at https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/climate/index.htm  or the Center for Disease Control’s BRACE program website at http://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/BRACE.htm .