Oct 13 -- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is seeking information from the public on how the agency may have the greatest impact in addressing climate change through its core competencies of health systems research, practice improvement, and data & analytics. Specifically, AHRQ wants to learn how the agency can best use its resources to help build the healthcare system's resilience to climate threats, reduce the healthcare industry's contribution to climate change while increasing sustainability, and address environmental justice issues in healthcare. Comments on this notice must be received by December 13, 2021.
AHRQ's mission is to produce evidence to make healthcare safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and with other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used.
In pursuit of that mission, AHRQ recognizes that climate change is a large and growing threat to public health and the ability of the U.S. healthcare system to provide high quality, equitable care. Climate change has contributed to heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, flooding, and associated infrastructure failures. All of these have detrimental physical and behavioral health consequences and place increased demands on the healthcare system as it also struggles to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted and exacerbated long-standing racial, ethnic, and economic health disparities.
AHRQ is seeking the public's input on how the agency may have the greatest impact in addressing climate change through its core competencies of health systems research, practice improvement, and data & analytics. Specifically, AHRQ wants to learn how the agency can best use its resources to help build the healthcare system's resilience to climate threats, reduce the healthcare industry's contribution to climate change while increasing sustainability, and address environmental justice issues in healthcare.
AHRQ is requesting information from the public regarding 13 broad questions. See
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/13/2021-22166/request-for-information-ahrqs-role-in-climate-change-and-environmental-justice
