The purpose of this series is to support you in evaluating your climate

and health adaptation work by sharing best practices and example scenarios.

In this video, we will set the stage by discussing the challenges

that agencies face while evaluating climate and health adaptation.

Climate change is impacting health in many ways.

In response, agencies are taking a variety of actions

to protect communities around the country.

These adaptation actions include changes to social, environmental and public health systems

to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience.

It is essential to evaluate these adaptation actions

to know whether the actions are actually reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience

for the health effects of a changing climate.

Several factors make evaluating climate and health adaptation particularly challenging,

and these videos explore three: time, skill and complexity.

Over time, climate acts on health in many ways.

Adaptation actions must anticipate climate and health effects

that may not have even occurred yet, may occur intermittently or may incur after a long time.

For example, evaluating adaptations to address the effects of extreme heat would need to take

into account seasonal and annual variations.

Similarly, the scale of an adaptation can affect our evaluation activities.

For example, a state implemented adaptation can affect the outcomes

of a city adaptation and vice versa.

In addition, because climate acts on health

through multiple systems both naturally occurring and human made,

adaptations often unfold through a variety of complex pathways.

For example, a greening adaptation may affect market forces in ways

that displace vulnerable populations.

It's a lot to consider and, while we may not be able to account for every challenge we encounter

in climate and health adaptation,

following evaluation best practices can make our work more efficient, effective and equitable.

In this video series, we will walk through the first three steps

of the CDC Evaluation Framework, learning about how

to develop an evaluation plan while accounting for issues of time, scale and complexity.

Effective evaluation planning is not simply creating a planning document.

Rather, it's a process that involves engaging stakeholders early and often

and incorporating their differing perspectives

to create a comprehensive description of the adaptation action.

This will lead to study designs that are more meaningful and responsive

to the needs of our stakeholders.

To illustrate effective evaluation planning in the following videos,

we will meet three public health practitioners and learn about their adaptation actions.

We will use these examples to introduce skills and best practices for moving through Steps 1,

2 and 3 of the CDC Framework and show how evaluation can be applied

to your own health adaptation work.

Advance to the next video to meet our three public health practitioners and learn

about their health adaptation projects.

For more information about evaluation practice overall,

please visit the CDC Evaluation web page.