Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium: Assessing Health Impacts and Documenting Observed Changes

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s (ANTHC) Center for Climate and Health has done a tremendous amount of work over the past four years to support Alaska Native communities in chronicling climate change impacts on the landscape and on human health. Staff members from the center apply their “engineering, environmental health and community health experience to perform assessments, develop community-appropriate strategies, and to describe climate-health connections.”Much of the early work has focused on areas of Alaska with high climate vulnerability, including the Northwest Arctic. Impacts of climate change in the Northwest Arctic region range from thinning sea and river ice, to permafrost melting and coastal erosion. Though many research groups are working to identify and monitor the changing environmental conditions around Alaska, ANTHC’s approach is unique both in its data collection methods and its focus, namely community-based adaptation strategies.