Joint Center Convenes Experts on 'Climate Change, Human Health and the Well-Being of Vulnerable Communities'

WASHINGTON, July 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Climate change is predicted to increase the intensity and negative impacts of urban heat events, prompting the need to develop preparedness and adaptation strategies that reduce societal vulnerability to extreme heat. The potential health impacts resulting from climate change are essential to policy discussions about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and about social adaptation to climate change. Children represent a particularly vulnerable group that is likely to suffer disproportionately from both direct and indirect adverse health effects of climate change. Anticipated direct health consequences of climate change include injury and death from extreme weather events and natural disasters; increases in climate sensitive infectious diseases; increases in air pollution-related illness; and more heat related, potentially fatal, illness. Within all of these categories, children experience greater vulnerability in comparison to other groups. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has brought together experts to discuss these issues with key stakeholders and provide policy solutions.

What:  Joint Center's 40th Anniversary Critical Issues in Climate Change Speakers Series will examine these issues using an interdisciplinary approach that includes information about weather and climate, the natural and built environment, social processes and characteristics, interactions with stakeholders, and an assessment of community vulnerability at the local level.

Who:  Georges C. Benjamin, M.D., Executive Director, American Public Health Association

Kimberly Thigpen Tart, Esq., Program Analyst, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Mary H. Hayden, Ph.D., Research Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research

Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, Executive Director, Children's Environmental Health Network

Ralph B. Everett, Esq., President and CEO, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

When:  Tuesday, July 27, 2010 ~ 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (Lunch will be provided.)

Where:  Columbus Room at Union Station, 50 Massachusetts Ave., NE

Washington, DC  20002

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is one of the nation's leading research and public policy institutions and the only one whose work focuses primarily on issues of particular concern to African Americans and other people of color. To learn more, please visit www.jointcenter.org.

SOURCE Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

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