Work completed by ANTHC has identified climate-related active and potential human health threats in three thematic areas: 1) Permafrost changes; 2) Habitat changes; 3) Impacts on wildlife. Rural villages in Arctic Alaska have requested, and received in-depth environmental health assessments, and adaptation strategies are in development. In response to these findings, ANTHC has developed the RAMP, and is collaborating with UA to develop relevant monitoring and surveillance tools for the thematic areas identified. This includes a training curriculum for village residents who will be observing, monitoring the RAMP technology, and collecting specimens. In addition, the UA will be funded to develop laboratory technology to enable village residents to monitor their environment, and for UA’s Wildlife Toxicology Laboratory to perform serosurveillance for zoonotic diseases on hunter-collected blood specimens, utilizing simple filter paper blood spot technology. A Climate/Health Assessment will be performed in the village of Selawik as part of the Proposal. Data from the first 12 months of hunter specimens will be combined with human zoonotic disease seroprevalence on rural Arctic AN residents, gathered and analyzed by CDC, as well as historic human and animal seroprevalence data, to establish time trends over the recent period of warming, and to create the basis for further statistical analysis of the impact or warming on both zoonotic infection of subsistence species, and human residents, and, if possible to create potential models of the interaction of climate, wildlife, and human residents and consumers. A network of communities with common monitoring observations, a common GIS interface to display the data and trends, and a common website to share useful adaptive strategies is also planned.
