TCHP's Data Development Work

TCHP’s Data Development Work

The Pala Band of Mission Indians’ Tribal Climate Health Project is Making Resilience Data More Accessible for U.S. Tribes

In the past six years, the Pala Band of Mission Indians’ Tribal Climate Health Project (TCHP) has leveraged funding from EPA, BIA, and CDC for capacity building and dataset development initiatives designed to make it easier for Tribes to address unique their health and other climate vulnerabilities using both western science and traditional knowledge.

RELEVANT WORK

Exposures, Impacts and Strategies (EISI) Tool

Through our capacity building work, we quickly recognized that trainings would not be enough to help under-resourced US Tribes manage the overwhelming burden of data gathering and fact finding needed to make adaptation and resilience decisions. To help Tribes move forward more easily from planning to action, the program has worked to lower the burden of climate information fact-finding by optimizing access to meaningful and readily usable external data to support Tribal adaptation planning and supplemental monitoring needs. The program developed a customizable Excel-based tool called the Exposures, Impacts, and Strategies Inventory (EISI) tool, and made it available for free download so Tribes don’t have to start from scratch when beginning their adaptation planning processes. Read more and access TCHP’s Exposures, Impacts, and Strategies Inventory (EISI) tool.

Intertribal Resilience Data Development

Beyond continuing to develop the EISI tool, the TCHP has been awarded BIA Tribal Resilience funding for three consecutive grant projects aimed at continuing to scale up our work to help tribes across the country more easily access health and other data to support their climate resilience efforts.

Scalable San Diego Intertribal Resilience Data Development Project (2019-2021)
Scaling Up SoCal Intertribal Resilience Data Development Project (2020-2022)
Threading Through California Intertribal Resilience Data Development Project (2021-2023)

Each of these projects allows us to collaborate with a small group of California Tribes to access adaptation data needs, obtain new datasets, and build national tribal capacity through presentations and collaborative meetings with data providers and partner organizations. We thank our Tribal partners for their participation and advice. The 10 Southern California Tribes PMBI is currently assisting through its current BIA-funded dataset development projects have received significant vulnerability data, including new heath datasets from the California Tribal Epidemiology Center, which provided Tribes at least five years of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) data to assess trends in mental health, health status, and community social cohesion. Other findings improved access to wildfire exposure data and health effects such as allergies, heat-related illness, and storm-related injuries. The 10 Tribes are also providing insights into remaining gaps in the data required for effective Tribal adaptation planning due to accessibility, geographic scale, or lack of research. For example, health incident data is typically gathered on the county scale and not always tied to the extreme event, e.g., respiratory illness rates due to wildfire smoke. These project findings are being used to further develop the EISI dataset tool, a data needs list, and replicable health dataset request protocols that are being distributed in California and the U.S. For example, TCHP hosted a training on Accessing Tribal Climate and Health Resilience Data (recorded May 5, 2021) and produced a companion guide called “Accessing Tribal Climate and Health Resilience Data: A Step-by-Step Guide.”

National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup (NTRDW)

As of June 2021, we are facilitating the National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup (NTRDW). The NTRDW is comprised of over 50 experts from across the country that are collaborating on identify solutions that help tribes more easily access meaningful climate vulnerability and resilience data. Recordings of NTRDW meetings are provided below.

Meeting #1: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, June 9, 2021

Kickoff of National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup (NTRDW) meetings with introductions from State, Federal, private, Tribal and local government and health agency representatives

Meeting #2: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, July 14, 2021

Featuring a discussion of the Tribal Climate Health Project’s Exposures Impacts and Strategies Inventory (EISI) tool, presented by Angie Hacker at Prosper Sustainably

Meeting #3: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, August 11, 2021

Featuring a discussion of the Temperate.io tool, presented by Jessica Cahail at Azavea

Meeting #4: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, September 8, 2021

Featuring a discussion of the Tribal Climate Tool, presented by Meade Krosby from the University of Washington

Meeting #5: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, October 13, 2021

Featuring a discussion of the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, Heat & Health Tracker and the Climate Change and Public Health dashboards, presented by Claudia Brown at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Meeting #6: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, November 10, 2021

Discussion led by Angie Hacker at Prosper Sustainably on data gaps and resources from attendees of NTRDW meeting

Meeting #7: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, December 8, 2021

Featuring a discussion from the Office of Coastal Management and their Digital Coast Tools, presented by TJ Moore at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Meeting #8: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, January 12, 2022

Featuring a discussion on the County of San Diego’s 2019 Tribal Brief for Health Conditions Among the Non-Hispanic American indian/Alaska Native Population, presented by senior epidemiologists Isabel Cortez and Christopher O’Malley from the County of San Diego’s Health & Human Services Department

Meeting #9: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, February 9, 2022

Featuring a discussion from the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 team at the State of California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), presented by Walker Wieland and Laura August.

Meeting #10: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, March 9, 2022

Featuring a discussion from fellow NTRDW members Isabel Cortez (Senior Epidemiologist, County of San Diego), Thomas Gates (CEC), Claudia Brown (CDC), and Angie Hacker (Tribal Climate Health Project), and others provide updates on their work, upcoming projects, and more.

Meeting #11: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, April 13, 2022

Featuring a discussion from Zoe Varner (UC Berkeley, MPH Candidate) and Laurie Montserrat (CalEPA’s OEHHA) on “Assessing Exposure Risks and Non-compliance Violations in Drinking Water Among Tribal Water Systems in California”

Meeting #12: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, June 8, 2022

Featuring a discussion on the newly revamped Healthy Places Index (HPI) 3.0, presented by Helen Dowling and Neil Maizlish from the Public Health Alliance

Meeting #13: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, August 10, 2022

Featuring a presentation from the Climate Change and Health Equity section at the California Department of Public Health, presented by Osamu Kumasaka

Meeting #14: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, September 14, 2022

Featuring updates from Angie Hacker at Prosper Sustainably and a discussion with NTRDW members

Meeting #16: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, November 9, 2022

Featuring a presentation conducted by Ben Hatchett and Katheryn Lambrecht (Western Regional Climate Center) regarding California weather and climate-inspired research activities

Meeting #17: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, December 14, 2022

Featuring a presentation by Laurie Monserrat and Carmen Milanes from California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment on their recently released report following their Tribal listening sessions on climate adaptation.

Meeting #18: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, January 11, 2023

Featuring a conversation about future work and meetings of the National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup.

Meeting #19: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, March 8, 2023

Discussing Tribal Climate Health Project data development and Tribal funding opportunities with featured speaker James Rattling Leaf (North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center)

Meeting #20: National Tribal Resilience Data Workgroup, May 10, 2023

Featuring presentations from Lori Cary-Kothera (White House Council on the Environmental Quality) and Patricia Kennedy (CA Governor’s Office of Planning and Research)