By Will Atwater
Despite the damage to its building and the disruption of service brought by Hurricane Debby in August, Sanford’s Helping Hand Clinic staff were better prepared to handle the chaos because of earlier guidance it had gotten for dealing with extreme weather.
“We were closed for 11 days, without power for half a day and Wi-Fi and internet for nine days — it just was a whole catastrophe,” said clinic Director Gwendolyn Cooper.
However, Cooper said, they were ready.
“We were in front of [the storm] because of the preventative steps that we were taking,” Cooper said, “just to be proactive because of what we learned.”
The Climate Resilience for Frontline Clinics Toolkit provided Helping Hand, which offers medical services to low-income and uninsured residents of Lee and Harnett counties, a road map for preparing the staff and its patients for storms and other climate catastrophes.”
For instance, following the advice in the tool kit, Cooper said the staff made flyers in Spanish and English, as well as slides that were available on the patient portal with information about things patients could do to prepare for the storm. Cooper said the clinic followed a tool kit suggestion and deployed sandbags to guard against flooding ahead of the storm.
The tool kit was produced in 2022 through a collaboration between Americares, a nonprofit that provides health-focused aid in response to disasters, and the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The organizations worked together to share “resources to help health care providers better manage care and protect patients from extreme heat, wildfires, wildfire smoke, hurricanes and floods,” according to a release.
“Climate change does not affect all of us equally. Around the world, people who have contributed the least to the problem are impacted most,” said Elena Ateva, Americares director of climate and disaster resilience. “This project supports clinics on the front lines of the climate crisis — clinics already serving marginalized patients — helping them to build resilience and be ready the next time extreme weather strikes.”
The increased frequency of extreme weather events, like Hurricane Debby and Hurricane Helene, and wildfires like the ones ravaging parts of Los Angeles, require doctors to become more aware of the environmental factors affecting patients’ health, said Marni Holder, director of community health initiatives at the UNC Department of Family Medicine.
Holder echoed Ateva’s assessment of the unequal effect of climate events on people: “It’s easy to see climate change as an important issue to think about with a health equity lens, because the impacts are different for different populations.”
‘A living document’
Holder said that “after a disaster, safety net clinics are critical to people restoring health, getting back on their feet [and] are a source of information on FEMA and recovery assistance and all the rest of it.”
She noted that natural disasters and pandemics provide opportunities for safety net clinics and the public health community, in general, to learn from and develop best practices in preparation for future upheaval.
Organizations like FEMA and the American Red Cross provide disaster preparedness plans to help people equip themselves for emergencies. What sets the Climate Resilience for Frontline Clinics Toolkit apart is that it was “co-developed in partnership with free clinics and community health centers serving low-income and uninsured patients,” said Donna Porstner, Americares vice president of marketing and communications.
Ateva agrees that extreme weather events, as well as input from practitioners, provide opportunities for the public health community to improve responses and better provide services to communities in need, and this is reflected in the tool kit, which she described as a “living document.”
What’s in the tool kit
The tool kit provides information sheets for patients and clinicians, planning tools and checklists to help clinic administrators prepare for climate-related emergencies. There are more than 40 free online resources, written in English and Spanish. The resources have guidance for patients with chronic health conditions such as asthma, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, according to information on the Americares site.
Updates to the tool kit include:
New Resources for Caregivers: Guidance on how caregivers can support their loved ones, in anticipation of and during extreme weather.
New Resources for Heat Interactions with Medication: A comprehensive list of common medications that increase a patient’s risk of health harms related to heat exposure.
New Resources for Wildfire Smoke: Guidance for clinicians and patients experiencing poor air quality and smoke from distant wildfires.
More Expansive Heat Preparedness Guides: Updated planning tools for patients who have specific conditions or risk factors — for example, pregnant people or people who work outdoors — outlining steps they can take when temperatures rise.
Expanded Resources for Clinic Administrators: More robust emergency management planning tools to help clinic staff prepare for climate risks.
Visual Enhancements: More and better graphics incorporating the latest scientific research to increase understanding of climate risks for patients at all literacy levels.
Clinician Documentation Templates: Text-based templates that can be incorporated into clinical documentation and after-visit summaries in an electronic health record.
Promoting resiliency
According to Americares, since its launch in 2022, the tool kit has been downloaded more than 20,000 times by clinics across the globe. In North Carolina, the Community Care Clinic of Dare on the Outer Banks, Gaston County-based Kintegra Health and The North Carolina Association of Free and Charitable Clinics participated in the development of the tool kit.
Cooper said the tool kit supports the clinic’s work by reinforcing messages to patients in a variety of ways. For instance, while patients are waiting in the clinic’s lobby, there are flyers reminding them to stay hydrated. This information is on posters inside the clinic, on television monitors and available through QR codes.
Kristen Tarpey, a nurse practitioner at Healthy Hands, provided another example of how the tool kit supports the patient/provider relationship.
“The tool kit has streamlined the way we can actually interact with the patient,” Tarpey said. “It provides a road map that’s easily distributed to our patients, because we do only have a finite amount of time with them during each interaction.”
The role of community care providers is also addressed in the tool kit’s latest version.
“One of the new aspects of the tool kit is caregiver specific — and that could be anyone from a mother taking care of a sick child to somebody taking care of an elderly person with special needs,” Ateva said. “They’re the ones who should be aware of what needs to happen: how to find a cooling center, for example, during a heat wave, or how to prepare a to-go bag during a hurricane or a flood.”
The post Frontline health clinics adapt to climate challenges with assistance from a free resource appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
