Climate Care Champions Program

Mobilizing Community Health Workers for Climate-Ready Communities

About the Program:

Climate change is the greatest health challenge of the 21st century. It threatens elements essential for human survival including air, food, water, shelter, and security. Climate change amplifies extreme events such as heat waves, floods, storms, wildfires, impacting air quality, food and water security, triggering migration and conflicts. It also directly affects our health by increasing incidence and prevalence of infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, and chronic diseases.

Urgent action is needed to address these ongoing and impending threats to the health and wellbeing of vulnerable communities including the urban and rural poor, women and children, elderly and migrant workers across Asia and the world. 

To meet these needs, Swasti and the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (GCCHE), Columbia University, have partnered to develop evidence-based training for front-line community health workers. 

The ClimateCare Champions Program will address the critical gap in knowledge and preparedness among Swasti’s network of community health workers, enabling them to prevent, prepare for- and respond to climate-related health needs in the communities they serve. This program was initially piloted in India and is intended to be scaled and adapted to meet the needs of any specific geography or community globally.

The key goals are to:

1. Increase Community Health Workers’ knowledge and efficacy related to the climate crisis so they may screen, detect, refer and prevent adverse climatic effects on the health and wellbeing of the vulnerable communities they serve. 
2. Build and strengthen the communication and advocacy skills of the community health workforce through training in risk and strategic communication materials so that they can serve as trusted messengers within their communities and with decision makers in both the private and public sector to advocate for localized interventions to address climate risks on health. 
3. Equip Community Health Workers with the expertise and tools necessary to effectively engage with disaster management, health systems, and other local resources, fostering community resilience and adaptation in the face of extreme weather events.

To assist these vulnerable communities, we will create tailor-made Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) materials specifically designed for Community Health Workers (CHWs). The material will be available in multiple languages and formats and will be peer-reviewed by health professionals. We are in the process of developing an online platform to house these curated and customizable RCCE products. 

Heat and Health Workshop Training of Trainers:

The workshop will develop a comprehensive understanding of the prevention, identification, and management of heat-related illnesses among vulnerable populations, thereby increasing community resilience. The interactive one-and-a-half-day training of trainers workshop combines short didactic sessions on core concepts, small group discussions, and simulation activities that leverage existing skills. Following the workshop, participants will train community health workers to meaningfully engage communities in the prevention and response to heat waves to prevent heat-related illnesses at home, work, and school. Workshop participants represent a diverse group of health professionals, field-level workers, and managers working with vulnerable populations across diverse geographies.

As a result of this heat and health capacity-building workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Identify and understand the fundamentals of heat-related illness, including how symptoms manifest in different populations (for example, elderly, children, pregnant women) and what to do if an individual has signs of heat-related illness
2. Identify and understand who is at risk of heat-related illness and why (personal, home, work, and community risk factors)
3. Communicate with families and communities about the health risks related to heat exposure
4. Educate families and communities about actions that can be taken to decrease the risk of heat illness, particularly in low-resource settings

Attendees

25+ participants working in 6 states across the following vulnerable communities were part of the interactive workshop: Urban Poor, Factory Workers, LGBTQ+ persons, Sex workers, Small Farmers and Migrant workers

Heat and Health Curriculum Overview

The workshop was divided into four key areas with the following focus:

1. Basics of Heat reviewed key terms (heat wave, heat index) and components of the indoor and outdoor environment that worsen or mitigate heat during the day.
2. Basics of Health-Related Illness delved into why heat-related illnesses occur, the core signs and symptoms, how to classify illness severity, and what actions should be taken.
3. Heat-related illness and community members focused on understanding individual, sociocultural, and exposure factors that lead to increased risk of heat related illness among vulnerable groups.
4. Applying knowledge, communication, and situational awareness in extreme heat involved a role-play assessment of a hypothetical community member for heat-related illness, and developing a plan to ensure appropriate care and prevent worsening health.

Heat and Health Curriculum Example: 

The workshop curriculum was specifically designed to empower the participants to integrate their existing skill sets of communication, knowledge of specific community needs and barriers to action, and wellness knowledge (i.e. nutrition, certain health conditions such as anemia) with new knowledge about extreme heat, its exacerbating factors, and risks and symptoms of heat related illness. This integration enables participants to leave the workshop with a new lens with which to comprehensively evaluate and recommend actions for a community member to protect themselves from extreme heat and heat related illness.

To accomplish these goals, the workshop had more didactic modules and more interactive discussions and simulations that leverage these existing skill sets.

An example of an interactive activity is described below. Interested in learning more about these interactive sessions or partnering with us to build a workshop similar to this? Get in touch with our team!

In small groups of 4:

• Read the short case
• List the risk factors to heat related illness in the categories listed below
• Discuss amongst your group how these risk factors combined in a unique manner because of this community member’s specific context to create risk to heat related illness

Case: Akash is a 27 year old living in Bengaluru and recently started working some outdoor construction/maintenance jobs. He has no medical history and lives with his brother and sister. He feels he is able to handle the heat most of the time, but the long pants and sleeves of his work clothes and the mask his boss wants him to wear are really difficult to handle during the heat of the day. He avoids drinking water because he has limited access to restrooms and his boss does not like when he takes additional breaks during the day.

Curriculum Evaluation:

• 100% of the participants found the content to be clear and understandable
• 79% of the participants responded that they are very confident speaking with community members about why heat related illness occurs
• 65% of the participants stated they are very confident speaking with community members about the core symptoms and categories of heat-related illness
• 56% of them feel very confident describing appropriate actions (eg behavior change, referrals for care etc.) that should be taken based on the categorization of symptoms
   

Key Learnings: