Community is Medicine: The population-level benefits of community-led initiatives to prevent and heal trauma from the climate crisis [npscoalition.org]

Registration Link: https://psu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WlCynrwlQ9SbI60UR2MkRw

Presentation by Bob Doppelt, Coordinator, International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC)

The National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives is hosting a presentation that will describe the urgent need, methods, and many benefits of community-led initiatives that use a public health approach to build population mental wellness and resilience to prevent and heal global warming-generated, and other, mental health, behavioral health, and psychosocial struggles. The information presented is the outcome of an intensive 2+ year international research project that is described in Bob Doppelt’s new book Preventing and Healing Climate Traumas: A Guide to Building Resilience and Hope in Communities (Routledge Publishing).

During the presentation participants will learn:

• How the relentless toxic stresses, emergencies, and disasters generated by the climate emergency are producing widespread individual, community, and societal traumas that, left unaddressed, will undermine individual and collective mental health, physical health, safety, security, and wellbeing and block solutions to the climate emergency.

• Why traditional expert-led mental health services cannot address these problems.

• The results of the ITRC’s extensive 2+ year research project that determined that, to prevent and heal widespread climate-generated mental health and psychosocial problems, community-led initiatives must be organized that use a public health approach to build population mental wellness and “transformational resilience.” This involves strengthening the capacity of all adults, adolescents, and young children to respond and adapt to adversities in safe, healthy, and just ways, and use them as transformational catalysts to generate new positive sources of meaning, purpose, hope, and courage in life.

• The 5 core foundational focuses that, in their own unique and culturally appropriate ways, will be essential for community-led initiatives to emphasize to build population mental wellness and transformational resilience for the climate emergency.

• Examples of communities-led initiatives using this approach and the many benefits they have achieved.

• The key roles mental health, physical health, social service, disaster management, climate mitigation and adaptation, and other professionals can play in the community initiatives.

*This presentation will be recorded and sent to everyone who registers.