Grant: Catalyst Grant: CBR in Climate Change Priority Area - Climate Justice

Climate change has significant impacts on daily living. There is a large body of literature highlighting the potential negative impacts of climate change on health including increased spread of infectious diseases, rising food insecurity, increased morbidity and mortality, and housing challenges. Due to the lack of stable shelter, people experiencing homelessness are more likely to experience climate injustice than their housed counterparts. We have partnered with Ottawa Inner City Health and Ottawa Public Health to describe experiences of climate (in)justice among people experiencing homelessness (PEH) who use opioid in Ottawa. The goals of this project are to describe the relationship between opioid overdose-related harms and rising temperatures; explore how PEH experience rising temperatures; and describe the experience of workers/leaders that provide services responding to the climate and substance use challenges faced by PEH. To do this, we will explore the relationship between the number and characteristics of fatal and non-fatal overdoses in hot and cold weather. We expect that overdoses will increase proportional to the change in temperature. Following this, we will conduct a series of qualitative interviews with PEH and their carers. The interviews with people experiencing homelessness will focus on how they experience rising temperature, the impacts this has on their physical and mental health, what services they have used during extreme weather, and barriers/facilitators to accessing existing services. The interviews with community organizations will focus on what services they provide to people experiencing homelessness during extreme weather events, existing gaps in services, and the barriers/facilitators to providing these services. The results of this study will be used to inform a larger grant proposal focused on developing environmentally just climate interventions for those experiencing homelessness.