Abstracts - Posters

Understanding the Nexus of Health, Social, and Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Canadians

Marcia Armstrong¹ and Douglas MacDonald
¹Health Canada
marcia_armstrong@hc-sc.gc.ca

The health of Canadians is influenced by the determinants of health which go beyond health care to include the broader environmental, social, economic, political and cultural factors that shape our lives as individuals and as communities. It is necessary to understand how the impacts of weather extremes and long term climate change affect these determinants and the capacity of individual Canadians, their social networks and support systems to cope with them. To develop effective strategies to adapt, it is also necessary to understand how these various factors and systems are inter-related. As the Health Sector of the Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Networks (C-CIARN), the Climate Change and Health Office at Health Canada in cooperation with the University of Toronto has developed a network of researchers interested in increasing our understanding of the socio-economic impacts of climate change. This presentation will provide information about the network and then will summarize the results of a workshop entitled "Understanding the Nexus of Health, Social, and Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Canadians". The workshop was held in November 2004 and examined the inter-relationship of these various systems and identified the characteristics of a research agenda and the challenges of developing such an agenda to examine this relationship in greater detail.

2005-04-06