Date: Wednesday August 19 12.00–1.00pm online
Bringing together researchers from the HEAL Bushfires, Air Pollution & Extreme Weather Events (BAPEE) Theme to explore how communities experience and respond to climate-related hazards across both regional and urban Australia. Highlighting research on the role of grassroots groups in supporting wellbeing in flood-affected communities, alongside emerging work on Community Resilience Centres as a strategy to reduce exposure to extreme heat and bushfire smoke. Together, the session provides insights into community-based approaches to disaster response and climate adaptation.
Reviewing and improving community group support for the wellbeing of flood affected Northern Rivers communities
Presenter: Dr Rebecca McNaught, University of Sydney
The Northern Rivers region of NSW has experienced compounding climate disasters in recent years. Previous local research found that formal mental health services are not often accessed following a disaster and that grassroots, place-based community groups, mainly led by women, provide supplementary support to community wellbeing in disaster recovery. Rebecca will present findings from a collaborative research project undertaken with Northern NSW LHD, Plan C, Peregrine Centre for Rural Mental Health and Northern Rivers Community Foundation to explore the contribution grassroots groups make to the wellbeing of communities as this has not been well recorded.
Rebecca will present a heatmap showing the points of intersection between the health system and community groups post-disaster as well as results from case studies undertaken with four grassroots community groups to understand the approaches that they used to support community wellbeing and the outcomes and challenges of using these approaches. The presentation will also share results of a learning and knowledge exchange event attended by 50 people from community groups, LHD, NGOs, and government disaster agencies. The project has found that community led initiatives have an important role to play in post-disaster mental health and the presentation will outline suggestions for how we can better enable and support the further development and quality of this work into the future.
Exploring the concept of Community Resilience Centres with communities facing climate vulnerability in Western Sydney and Canberra
Presenter: Prof Abby Mellick Lopes, University of Technology Sydney
The concept of Community Resilience Centres (CRC) – public spaces offering temporary protection from heat and smoke during extreme weather – is gaining traction globally. It is particularly important in urban environments where heat and smoke impact communities living in poorly insulated and ageing housing that fails to meet World Health Organisation indoor thermal safety standards. In the rapidly growing region of Western Sydney for example, extreme heat is a persistent condition that exacerbates intersecting vulnerabilities including age, disability, low-income, cultural and linguistic diversity, women at risk of domestic violence and people living alone.
This presentation reports on an early stage of the NHMRC-funded project Community resilience centres for improving climate adaptation to bushfire smoke and heatwaves in changing urban environments, which aims to evaluate the effectiveness of community resilience centres in reducing exposure to heat and smoke-related air pollution. The study also aims to assess the health benefits and costs of such centres, and their implementation challenges in climate affected regions of Western Sydney and Canberra. I will share preliminary findings from a series of Discovery and Co-design workshops with over 70 diverse community members, in which we explored lived experiences of heat and smoke, community expectations of safe and inclusive CRCs, and communication strategies to support the use of such centres. The results thus far indicate that CRCs have a vital role to play in cities that are far from ‘climate-ready’; however, their success will depend on a community-centred approach to design and implementation that respond to local needs and lived realities.
This webinar is hosted by the BAPEE Theme of the HEAL Network. The theme, co-led by Prof Geoffrey Morgan, Prof Fay Johnston and Dr Sharon Campbell, involves both senior and early career researchers from across Australia to investigate the health impacts of climate-related hazards, including bushfires, air pollution and extreme weather events such as floods and heatwaves, and to identify practical strategies to support resilience and inform policy and practice.
