Building community resilience to climate change through public health planning.
OBJECTIVE
Nillumbik Shire Council, in partnership with La Trobe University, used the Municipal Public Health Planning process to develop an approach for building the resilience of local communities to climate-related stressors. The objective was to define an approach for building community resilience to climate change and to integrate this approach with the 'Environments for Health' framework.


METHODS
Key published papers and reports by leading experts the field were reviewed. Literature was selected based on its relevance to the subjects of community resilience and climate change and was derived from local and international publications, the vast majority published within the past two decades.


RESULTS
Review of literature on community resilience revealed that four principal resource sets contribute to the capacity of communities to adapt in times of stress, these being: economic development; social capital; information and communication; and community competence. On the strength of findings, a framework for building each resilience resource set within each of the Environments for Health was constructed. This paper introduces the newly constructed 'Community Resilience Framework', which describes how each one of the four resilience resource sets can be developed within social, built, natural and economic environments.


CONCLUSIONS
The Community Resilience Framework defines an approach for simultaneously creating supportive environments for health and increasing community capacity for adaptation to climate-related stressors. As such, it can be used by Municipal Public Health Planners as a guide in building community resilience to climate change.
School of Public Health, La Trobe University, Victoria. r.dbajayo@gmail.com
Rachael
R
Bajayo
D057231:Climate Change; D003142:Communication; D003153:Community Health Services; D004467:Economics; D006285:Health Planning / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006291:Health Policy; D006292:Health Priorities; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012944:Social Support