Program Teams

Meet the ACE-CH Teams

Program
Alliance for Community Engagement – Climate and Health
Topic(s)
Climate Health

Meet the Teams

University of Alaska Fairbanks | Alaska Alliance for Community Engagement – Climate and Health 

In the last few decades, the rate of climate change and associated environmental shifts has been significantly more noticeable in the polar regions, with the North Pole experiencing two to seven times the rate of warming caused by humans compared to the rest of the planet, putting Alaska and it’s Indigenous people at the epicenter of climate change.  The Alaska Alliance for Community Engagement – Climate and Health (AK ACE-CH) Hub will bring together a diverse, multidisciplinary, and community-engaged team of experts to evaluate and codevelop strategies to ease climate change and health impacts in remote and rural regions of Alaska where continuing the traditional ways of living and surviving is most highly threatened. The AK ACE-CH Hub network will serve as a driver for new solutions that promote health equity and climate justice.

Principal Investigators

Stacy Rasmus, Ph.D. | Director, Center for Alaska Native Health Research

Karsten Hueffer, D.V.M., Ph.D. | Dean, College of Natural Science and Mathematics

Public Health Institute |Climate Health Adaptation and Resilience Mobilization Lake County Project

The Climate Health Adaptation and Resilience Mobilization (CHARM) Lake County Project, a coalition formed by Tracking California and the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians (Big Valley Rancheria), establishes continuous community-engagement structures with local Tribes and community-based organizations to address the health impacts of harmful algae blooms and severe heat events on American Indian Tribal communities, immigrants, and agricultural workers in Lake County, California. CHARM focuses on collecting information on the needs of these communities in these climate-driven environmental events and developing a comprehensive, community-wide action plan to improve infrastructure and communication during these events.

Principal Investigator:

Paul English, Ph.D., M.P.H. | Director, Tracking California

University of Colorado School of Public Health – Mountain West ACE-CH Hub 

The Mountain West ACE-CH Hub is building relationships and getting involved with rural and urban focal communities in Colorado. The goal is to understand how communities are experiencing climate stressors such as drought, wildfires, air quality, and heat, and identify opportunities to advance climate justice. Mountain West ACE-CH Hub will also work to support and expand existing and future community remedies and actions to bring about change. This is achieved through organized conversations to encourage diverse voices for bidirectional learning, climate-health literacy building, and action planning as a team to advance communities’ priorities for climate resilience and health equity.

Principal Investigators:

Katherine (Katie) L. Dickinson, Ph.D., M.S. | Associate Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health

Katherine (Kathy) A. James, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., M.S. | Associate Professor, Center for Health, Work & Environment, Community Epidemiology & Program Evaluation, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health, and Department of Epidemiology

University of Southern California | Prioritizing Local Action for Climate Equity (PLACE) Study

The Southern California hub (University of Southern California, Occidental College, and Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles) focuses on enhancing and evaluating the ability of historically marginalized communities to become involved in climate-resiliency efforts. The hub is expanding community–academic partnerships, building a climate-justice framework, and adding neighborhood-level exposure and health measures to develop a community climate health plan to transform Los Angeles into a fair, reformed, and resilient city. The hub uses community-based research, popular education, and three-dimensional data to assess vulnerability down to the neighborhood level. This helps the group increase knowledge, move forward with local solutions, and improve the distribution of climate-change research.

Principal Investigator:

Jill Johnston, Ph.D. | Associate Professor, Population and Public Health Sciences