# Public Health Response to a Climate Emergency: A Teaching Exercise

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a teaching exercise to train public health professionals in responding to climate-related emergencies like heatwaves and flooding.

## Contribution

The paper presents a realistic, educational tabletop exercise for training in climate-related public health emergencies.

## Key findings

- Public health professionals need training for climate-related emergencies such as heat and flooding.
- Tabletop exercises can effectively simulate and educate on climate-exacerbated public health scenarios.
- Few residency programs include simulated climate emergency exercises despite their importance.

## Abstract

•Training public health professionals about response to heat and flooding.•Using a tabletop exercise to educate about climate-related emergencies.•Developing a case that is realistic, educational, and challenging.

Training public health professionals about response to heat and flooding.

Using a tabletop exercise to educate about climate-related emergencies.

Developing a case that is realistic, educational, and challenging.

Public health emergencies often involve weather-related issues, such as flooding, heatwaves, wildfires, storms, and vector-borne or water-borne diseases. Extreme weather is becoming more frequent and intense owing to climate change. Preventive medicine physicians and other public health professionals are uniquely qualified to serve in leadership or advisory roles during the actual emergencies or preparedness for the climate-related emergencies. Many residency programs are now integrating climate education into their curriculum, but few include simulated exercises. The authors present a climate-exacerbated scenario, discussion questions, and consideration for next steps in educating public health leaders and other collaborators.

Image, graphical abstract