Improving Our Understanding

The Office of Public Health is committed to sharing critical, relevant articles and recent publications to help improve understanding of the most pressing issues of our time. Here you will find links to topics connected to the National Park system, ranging from climate change and heat illness risk to information on harmful algal blooms. We look forward to improving our understanding and taking action together!

Research and Publications

Research: Grand Canyon National Park

Climate Change and Heat Illness Risk

Clinician education on climate change and health: virtual learning community models

Background

Climate change is a public health emergency. Clinicians are increasingly managing patients with health problems related to climate change, including kidney failure and heat stroke from exposure to extreme heat and drought, and pulmonary cardiovascular events caused by air pollution and wildfires. However, relatively few health professionals know how to engage with patients on these issues. In a 2021 global survey of 4654 health professionals regarding climate change, 76% of participants recognised the need for continuing professional education, 72% desired knowledge regarding health-care sustainability, and 69% felt that effective communication skills were also needed. Visit the hyperlink below to read the full article. 

Clinician education on climate change and health: virtual learning community models. Katzman JG, Balbus J, Herring D, Bole A, Buttke DE, Schramm P. 2023. Lancet Planetary Health. 7(6):c444-6. 

Collateral Damage: How an ailing planet is harming human health

Background

As public land caretakers, we are aware of the harmful impacts a changing climate has had and will continue to have on the fragile resources we are committed to protecting. What we may be less inclined to consider are the impacts on our personal health and wellbeing. Climate change has long been portrayed as a phenomenon happening somewhere else and, in the future, but recent events highlight just how much climate change is happening here, happening now, and threatening our health. The good news is, studies show that when people recognize climate change as a threat to human health, they are more likely to act compared to when climate change is seen as an impact to the natural world alone (Kotcher et al, 2019). So, the more people understand the immediate health impacts of climate change, the swifter and more significant action we will see to address the human causes of climate change. Visit the hyperlink below to read the full article. 

This article was orginally featured in the Winter Issue of Ranger Magazine, Collateral Damage: How an Ailing Planet is Harming Human Health. By CAPT Sara Newman and CAPT Danielle Buttke

Managing Wildlife Disease Under Climate Change

Background

For many land management agencies, climate change presents an unprecedented circumstance where native species’ ranges are shifting, natural processes are transforming, and previously innocuous stressors can have outsized impacts (Feldmen et al., 2017; Pecl et al., 2017; Byers 2020; Cohen et al., 2020; Rohr & Cohen, 2020). In this space, conservation practices and traditional land-management policy can conflict. This divergence is particularly apparent for agencies such as the United States National Park Service (NPS) that, despite existing in a world changing rapidly under modern human influence, are steeped in long-established policies to maintain natural conditions. How NPS policy and its implementation evolve are critical not only to the agency and its stakeholders, but as an example for other natural resource management organizations with similar preservation missions. Visit the hyperlink below to read the full article. 

Managing wildlife disease under climate change: into uncharted temperatures and policy. Buttke DE, Wild MA, Hahn M, Jackson K, Monello R. 2021. EcoHealth. doi: 10.1007/s10393-021-01542-y. 

Wildland Fires Could Be Putting Your Drinking Water at Risk

Background

Recurring wildland fires are a natural and necessary part of many landscapes in the western United States, but decades of fire suppression and a changing climate have made them more destructive than they were historically, putting our supply of safe drinking water at risk. Shawn Norton, Sustainable Operations program manager for the National Park Service, says, “Protection of drinking water is perhaps one of the greatest public trusts.” He says climate change is “altering wildfire regimes and thus water quality,” making it imperative that we understand the risk to drinking water from fires that are now more frequent and intense. Norton adds that we must prepare for this risk by making good public health and engineering decisions. But to do that, it’s important to know how wildfire affects water sources and infrastructure. This isn’t well understood, because there’s not much information to help us assess post-wildfire impacts and recovery. To address this knowledge gap, we examined the latest research regarding wildfire impacts on water quality and identified measures parks can take to reduce risk. Visit the link to read the full article. 

This article was originally published in the "Features" section of Park Science magazine, Volume 37, Number 1, Summer 2023 (July 31, 2023). By Michael Wandersee, Dara Zimmerman, Kelly Kachurak, Leo Angelo Gumapas, Kayla DeVault Wendt, and Kurt Kesteloot