Overview
Bushfire smoke and heatwaves increasingly threaten population health, especially among vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities or comorbidities, and low-income households. These risks are projected to intensify with climate change, particularly in urban areas affected by heat islands, poor housing, and socioeconomic disadvantage.
Impact
Community resilience centres—cool, clean-air spaces in public buildings—offer a promising yet under-evaluated intervention. This interdisciplinary, community co-designed project will assess their effectiveness in reducing exposure to heat and smoke, potential health benefits and costs, and associated implementation challenges. The project focuses on fast-growing, high-risk suburbs in Western Sydney and Canberra to inform scalable, evidence-based public health strategies.
Seeking Community Participation
We are carrying out a research study to evaluate how community resilience centres can reduce people’s exposure to heat and smoke.
We are seeking ppeople who lin in social and public housing in the ACT to participate in our research.
