Resilient Responses to Protect Lung Health in Nunavik
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Civil Environmental and Geomatic Eng
Abstract
The potential impact of anthropogenic climate change on lung health is a "threat no less consequential than cigarette smoking". 1
The lung health-related impact of climate change is already being felt in the Inuit Nunangat region of Nunavik, Quebec. The need to mitigate impacts of climate change on lung health is particularly urgent in Nunavik due to the region's existing vulnerabilities with respect to respiratory diseases- vulnerabilities rooted in social determinants of health and historical injustices, and whose impact is amplified by health service infrastructure gaps that represent a major disparity between Nunavik and the rest of Quebec. Our project addresses Theme 2 of the CINUK Call for Research Proposals, "Mitigations & Adaptations for Resilience." The two cross-cutting issues addressed are Inuit community health & well-being, and Resilience and sustainability. Our diverse coalition of researchers and community partners will interweave three streams of research activities, taking place in parallel: (1) community-based participatory research and implementation science methods are applied to design a Community Lung Health Programme with community members addressing lung health through a holistic biosocial paradigm; (2) engineering, microbiology, and epidemiologic methods are leveraged to develop a protocol that the Community Lung Health Programme can use to accurately measure built-environment-related
determinants of lung health, and identify at-risk housing stock; (3) scoping and systematic review methods, and a pilot study, are applied to evaluate emerging technologies for point-of-care diagnosis or monitoring of respiratory diseases to reduce medical travel out of region.
The lung health-related impact of climate change is already being felt in the Inuit Nunangat region of Nunavik, Quebec. The need to mitigate impacts of climate change on lung health is particularly urgent in Nunavik due to the region's existing vulnerabilities with respect to respiratory diseases- vulnerabilities rooted in social determinants of health and historical injustices, and whose impact is amplified by health service infrastructure gaps that represent a major disparity between Nunavik and the rest of Quebec. Our project addresses Theme 2 of the CINUK Call for Research Proposals, "Mitigations & Adaptations for Resilience." The two cross-cutting issues addressed are Inuit community health & well-being, and Resilience and sustainability. Our diverse coalition of researchers and community partners will interweave three streams of research activities, taking place in parallel: (1) community-based participatory research and implementation science methods are applied to design a Community Lung Health Programme with community members addressing lung health through a holistic biosocial paradigm; (2) engineering, microbiology, and epidemiologic methods are leveraged to develop a protocol that the Community Lung Health Programme can use to accurately measure built-environment-related
determinants of lung health, and identify at-risk housing stock; (3) scoping and systematic review methods, and a pilot study, are applied to evaluate emerging technologies for point-of-care diagnosis or monitoring of respiratory diseases to reduce medical travel out of region.
