Hill Heat

Witness

• Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior

Witness

• Lisa Jackson, Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Witness

• Tom Tidwell, Chief, U.S. Forest Service

Witness

• Lisa Jackson, Administrator, United States Environmental Protection Agency

Witnesses

Panel 1

• Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President

Panel 2

• Dan Hesse, Chief Executive Officer, Sprint Nextel
• Adrian Tuck, Chief Executive Officer, Tendril Networks, Inc.
• Kathrin Winkler, Chief Sustainability Officer, EMC2 Corporation
• Lorie Wigle, General Manager, Eco-Technology Program Office, Intel Corporation

Witness

• Ken Salazar, Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior

Register at www.ametsoc.org/cb

While weather extremes, melting glaciers, and crop failures dominate the public discourse on global warming, human health risks from climate change are of growing concern to both the public and health professionals. This briefing will provide an overview of these health risks and health system responses.

Speakers

• Rita Colwell, Ph.D. Distinguished University Professor both at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Senior Advisor and Chairman Emeritus, Canon US Life Sciences, Inc., and President and CEO of CosmosID, Inc.
• Howard Frumkin, M.D., Dr.P.H. Special Assistant to the Director for Climate Change and Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Jonathan Patz, MD, MPH. Professor & Director of Global Environmental Health at the University of Wisconsin in Madison

Moderator

• Paul Higgins, Ph.D. Senior Policy Fellow, American Meteorological Society

First, Dr. Rita Colwell (University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health) will review major health threats, including heat waves, weather and hydrologic extremes, reduced air quality, rising allergen exposures, infectious diseases, reduced agricultural output, mental health consequences, and civil disruption such as population displacement. She will draw particularly on her research on infectious diseases, including both vector-borne diseases (e.g. malaria, plague, and many viral diseases) and water-borne diseases (e.g. cholera), explaining recent scientific advances in understanding the links between environmental change and disease risk.

Second, Dr. Howard Frumkin (CDC) will discuss the public health response to these threats, drawing on a framework developed at CDC and now being implemented at the Federal, state, and local levels. This response involves longstanding core public health activities, such as disease surveillance, outbreak investigations, vulnerability assessments, health communication, and preparedness planning. He will also emphasize the importance of assessing the health consequences of mitigation strategies, so decision-makers can choose the most health-protective approaches.

Finally, Dr, Jonathan Patz (University of Wisconsin) will introduce the concept of co-benefits, a key strategy in both addressing climate change and promoting health. For example, transportation strategies that reduce travel demand and favor walking, bicycling, and transit over automobiles, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote physical activity as well as improve air quality. The net result is a steep drop in cardiovascular disease, cancer, asthma and other ailments. Dr. Patz will cite recent analyses in the US suggesting that climate change mitigation could offer a substantial opportunity to improve the health of the public and save billions of dollars in healthcare costs and worker productivity.

Witness

• Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy