Children’s Vulnerability to Environmental Exposures: Adaptation
- Shidonna Raven
- 3 hours ago
- 1 min read
Oct 14m 2010
Source: NIH
National Library of Medicine
National Center for Biotechnology Information
Photo Source: Unsplash
Prevention through adaptation, resilience, and mitigation
Prevention strategies in relation to climate change have largely focused on reduction or mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) levels in the global system. However, many GHGs in the atmosphere and dissolved in the ocean from past and ongoing human activity are long-lived and will drive climate change for years to come, a process termed “built-in” climate change (Solomon et al. 2009). Their continuing presence argues for the need to develop evidence-based adaptation strategies that proceed in parallel with efforts to prevent GHG accumulation.
The concept of prevention in public health is multitiered. Table 3 portrays the levels of prevention in relation to potential health effects from climate change, with child-protective examples at each level. Primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention all have a role in adaptation, or preparedness, and each can contribute to the resilience of individuals, communities, and nations. Resilience is defined as “the ability of a social or ecologic system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity for self-organization, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change” (Baede et al. 2007). Although public health efforts aimed at any of these levels of prevention typically benefit children, some prevention resources are best spent on specifically targeting children or their parents.
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