Building stronger communities by centring health in climate and environmental action
By NCEPH researchers Associate Professor Aparna Lal, PhD Candidate Zoë Becvarik and Dr Erin I. Walsh
Over the past year, our research team have advanced an integrated agenda bringing together policy innovation, community engagement and public health expertise, with a particular emphasis on adaptation, health co-benefits, and community resilience.
This work sits within a rapidly expanding global evidence base demonstrating that well-designed climate policies can deliver substantial near-term health gains while accelerating decarbonisation and climate resilience.
Quantifying the health co-benefits of climate action
In partnership with the Climate and Environment Directorate of the ACT Government, we developed a systematic, policy-facing methodology to identify, quantify and assign economic value to the health and wellbeing co-benefits of climate action.
In line with international work on health co-benefits, the methodology reframes many so‑called "unintended" health impacts of climate policy as intentional, quantifiable outcomes that can and should be embedded in routine policy design and appraisal. Anchored in a global literature review, expert workshops, and a formal Delphi process with policy experts in the ACT, this approach generated consensus on 28 priority health and wellbeing co-benefits relevant to sub‑national climate policy.
The resulting "co-benefits library" spans reduced morbidity and mortality, improved psychosocial wellbeing, and productivity gains, and makes explicit how sectors such as energy, housing and transport can simultaneously advance climate mitigation and adaptation, and public health.
Who needs it the most? Identifying areas of compounding disadvantage
A second major focus of our work in 2025 was developing high-resolution spatial maps of compounding disadvantage and discomfort. Mapping indices such as socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage, material comfort, thermal comfort, and health vulnerability, we identified pockets where these challenges compounded, even in areas that are rated as relatively advantaged and high-comfort (e.g., inner South), using national-level data.
More broadly, this approach is consistent with our recent geospatial work in Australian cities showing that clusters of "sweet" (health-promoting) and "sour" (health-harming) environmental combinations track closely with neighbourhood socioeconomic status, highlighting how fine-grained mapping can reveal and help redress environmental inequities.
Together, this work illustrates the potential of decision support tools that integrate climate, health and geospatial data to guide the design, implementation and evaluation of climate initiatives so that health gains are maximised for those at greatest risk.
Reframing community resilience to environmental change
A third strand of our work in 2025 has focused on conceptual and empirical advances in understanding what community resilience to the health and wellbeing impacts of environmental and climate change mean in practice.
Drawing on our global review of resilience frameworks, we identified 11 core dimensions and 41 indicator categories relevant to health-related resilience. Despite the proliferation of frameworks, there was no consensus on how key dimensions are defined or measured, and almost none integrated both health and environmental dimensions within a single framework.
Many indicators essential for capturing socially differentiated climate-health risks - including culture, communication and information, and knowledge, attitudes and practices - were inconsistently or infrequently applied, echoing concerns raised in international guidance on climate-resilient health systems.
Through an expert elicitation process across government and community sectors, we aimed to focus to gain consensus on the components that are central to community health resilience.
As one expert noted: “An evidence-based and expert-endorsed framework would support key decision-making for Governments, funding bodies and financial institutions to drive action in climate adaptation and resilience.”
Experts also highlighted the importance of recognising diverse needs and strengths, supporting community capacity for informed and proactive action, and assessing not only the presence of resources but also their accessibility, acceptability and cultural relevance.
Centring health and equity in climate adaptation
For effective adaptation, inclusive, culturally responsive approaches are not simply beneficial, but essential.
Our focus group research with first-generation migrant women in the ACT revealed complementary insights about how lived experience, cultural knowledge and community networks shape how climate risks and adaptation options are understood and managed. Our results indicated that greater involvement of women in climate adaptation decision-making and disaster management could overcome feelings of powerlessness and, ultimately, provide culturally and physically safe advice and options during extreme weather emergencies.
We also found that migrant women highly valued public green and blue spaces to keep themselves and their families cool during heatwaves, but that accessibility of these spaces required tacit local knowledge. The value of access to blue-green space was reinforced by our nationwide survey, which found that Australians had a generally positive attitude towards willingness to pay for blue-green space, and that this was greatest amongst people who frequently used the spaces, had left-leaning politics, and had experienced the bushfires.
Collectively, this work has built on and continues the momentum gained from the implementation of the previous Climate Strategy (2019-2025), as well as meaningfully contributed to the current ACT Climate Strategy for 2026-35 to ensure evidence, expertise, and lessons learned are available.
Looking ahead
Our work in the past year has highlighted that resilience is strengthened when communities are informed, supported and empowered - even more so when we systematically identify and monitor the health benefits of the policy and programme actions we are already taking.
Looking ahead, our team will further explore the intersection of co-benefits, community resilience, and health in Australia and the region, with a focus on generating insights that strengthen the translation of evidence into more effective and equitable policy and practice.