RETURN ON INNOVATION

Return on innovation means healthier populations, more robust systems, and sustained community engagement. With every effort, we become increasingly invested in a more equitable, balanced, and just society.

Dedicated to getting the most out of population-based benchmarks, predictive tools, and capability-building methodologies, we support community partners and state agencies in improving productivity and yielding repeatable and scalable initiatives.

Our evaluation and data analysis to address food insecurities in the nearly 2.5 million Floridians, including one-third who are children, facing hunger to facilitate training and community-based activities focused on team-based learning continues to work hard for all of Florida. Our expertise supports:

Populations

Facilitating positive response to change and transformative ideas across rural, urban, and coastal communities.

Analysis

We are positioning data as a catalyst for driving community-centered collaboration, workflows, and culture change.

Technical Assistance

Available to our partners for health assessment and planning, policy development, implementation, evaluation, and strategic planning.

Practice

We deliver practical models and actionable policy recommendations most likely to yield the most significant returns in breakthrough innovations.

Our Focus on Climate and Community Health Outcomes

In recent years, Hurricanes, Katrina, Irma, and Maria presented unprecedented natural disasters in the Coastal United States. Rising sea levels, warming waters, and weakened infrastructures have increased the severity (intensity) of the storms and the magnitude of damage. In each of these disasters, evidence emerged regarding racism and evacuation, poor education, and preparation for vulnerable populations, including the disabled, and differential responses to communities with more significant social, medical, and economic vulnerabilities.

Sea-level rise directly influences groundwater and, thus, will cause groundwater levels to rise as the sea rises, increasing the number of geographically vulnerable people. Many populations currently demonstrate at least one vulnerability – social, medical, or geographic – to sea-level rise, with many of these vulnerabilities overlapping. Storm surge resulting from hurricanes are also a tremendous threat to health and equity for many vulnerable populations.

Our climate change targets focus on threats to the built and natural environment and densely populated and highly diverse populations. Our efforts address the need for mapping of rising sea-level risks, alongside the urgent need for mapped and aligned messaging, education, and pinpoints for acute care evacuation planning for persons with diabetes, poor respiratory function (asthma, severe acute-respiratory disorders, infection-related respiratory illness, COPD) and disabilities (mobility (wheelchair or limited physical capabilities), sight-impaired (blindness), and hearing-impaired (deaf).

Working to protect all Florida populations our public health research, climate preparation, and planning tools:

Deliver culturally, linguistically, and timely messaging for Southeast Florida regarding sea-level rising, differential impacts of storm surge, and hurricane response for vulnerable communities.
Revive and extend Florida Regional Climate Action Plans concentrating on long-term health care costs, the gentrification of populations to low-lying areas, and increased structural, evacuation zones, and transportation risk for economically vulnerable communities.
Advance models for cross-sector medical, public health, and city response platforms resolving acute care and emergency medical planning gaps during natural disasters for persons with a chronic health condition, the elderly, and the disabled.