Welcome to the Healthy Adaptations Hub

The Healthy Adaptations project was undertaken by a team of social scientists, health economists, demographers and hydrologists at the University of Exeter, Maynooth University and the University of Ghana. You can get in touch with the Healthy Adaptations Team at healthyadaptions.org@gmail.com.

The project aimed to develop an evaluation tool for sustainable adaptation that comprehensively incorporates the health and wellbeing consequences of specific adaptation interventions, focusing on flood risk adaptation. Flooding is treated as one of the major climate driven risks given that it causes high levels of mortality globally every year, and has multiple and interacting health dimensions and outcomes. Across the climate change adaptation literature, there is often a focus on singular aspects of how interventions shape wellbeing (e.g. nature connection, mental health, etc.). Far less is understood about the ways in which multiple dimensions of people’s lives are affected by adaptation processes with knock-on consequences for wellbeing outcomes. There is thus a need for deeper understanding of the extent to which different areas of life, referred to in the Healthy Adaptations Hub as ‘Domains of Impact’, are impacted by climate adaptations.

Over the course of the project, the research team framed their analysis around three principal forms of flood adaptation: planned relocation, hard engineering, and living with risk. The team tested and validated new evaluative criteria in the context of real world interventions currently being implemented in Ireland, Ghana, and the UK, working with resident communities, public health and flood risk management practitioners across the three case study locations.

The Healthy Adaptations project established three Expert Panels corresponding to the case study locations:

Ghana

• Theophilus Agbakla, Chief of Totope
• Felix Agbaklah, Teacher/Fisherman
• Dr. Barnabas Amisigo, Research Scientist at the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research
• Dr. Antwi-Bosiako Amoah, Deputy Director, Climate Change Adaptation, EPA
• Eben Kwaku Meka, Teacher/Fisherman
• Ms. Comfort Kublenu, Deputy Director of nursing, Ghana Health Service
• Dr. Naomi Kumi, Head of Climatological Unit, Ghana Meteorological Society
• Dr. Emmanuel, Kyeremanteng-Amoah, Deputy Program Manager, Occupational and Environmental Health Unit, Ghana Health Service
• Mr. Winfred Nelson, Deputy Director, National Development Planning Commission
• Mr. James Oppong Otoo, Senior Disaster Control Officer, NADMO

Ireland

• Mark Adamson, Head of the Flood Relief and Risk Management Division in the Office of Public Works
• Marc Devereux, Flood Management, Wicklow County Council
• ​Alan Dunney, Regional Co-ordinator, Eastern Midlands Climate Action Regional Office
• Professor Patrick Goodman, Medical Physics and Physiological Measurement.
• Dr Ina Kelly, Chair, National Public Health Medicine Environment and Health Group
• Dr Jean O’Dwyer, Environment and Health Research Lab
• Seán O’Leary, Impacts and adaptation lead at Climate Change Advisory Council Secretariat

UK

• Kathryn Brown, Head of Adaptation, Climate Change Commission
• ​Nicola Dawson, Civil Contingencies Manager, Somerset Council
• Mary Dhonou, Flooded Resident and Flood Resilience Consultant
• Emma Gifford, Community Engagement Officer, Somerset Rivers Authority
• Kate Kipling, Senior Scientist, Environment Agency
• Lindsey McEwen, Professor in Environmental Management, University of the West of England
• Mark McLaughlin, Principal Scientist, Scottish Environment Protection Agency
• Steve Mewes, Policy and Campaigns Manager, Somerset Wildlife Trust
• Emer O’ Connell, Head of Extreme Events and Health Protection, Public Health England
• Nick Pyatt, Trioss
• Maggie Rae, President, Faculty of Public Health
• Clive Walmsley, Principal Climate Change Advisor, Natural Resources Wales