Resilience Medicine is a new health and wellness paradigm dedicated to defining and building strategies and interventions to enhance individual and community capacities to flourish.

We define resilience as the ability of a system to resist, absorb, adapt and recover from the impact of adverse or challenging events, processes or experiences.

Resilience capacities are awakened during and after an adverse or challenging event or experience.

Resilience links a set of adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning in response to an adverse or challenging event or experience.

Resilience is not static; it fluctuates over time. Resilience is malleable and dynamic. Resilience can be measured and enhanced.

At the individual level, resilience finds expression in the actualization of specific traits or characteristics (strengths).

At the community and organizational level, resilience resides in cultural norms or habits, and collective knowledge (implicit and explicit).

Understanding, exploring and expanding the capacity for resilience is a continual process involving assessment, reflection, knowledge and action.

Rise.Health Solutions provides personalized tools and technologies to measure, assess and improve the capacity for resilience at the individual and community or organizational level.

OUR SERVICES

Climate resilient development involves questions of equity and system transitions in land, ocean and ecosystems; urban and infrastructure; energy; industry; and society and includes adaptations for human, ecosystem and planetary health. Pursuing climate resilient development focuses on both where people and ecosystems are co-located as well as the protection and maintenance of ecosystem function at the planetary scale.

IPCC (Intergovernmenetal Panel on Climate Change) 2022

Rise.Health Solutions provides services related to Resilience Medicine, principally contracting with local authorities and/or bodies, such as city councils or neighborhood associations, to assist decision-makers and local residents to assess the scale and scope of resilience to the challenges of climate change (such as extreme heat, drought or flooding) and natural disasters. (such as hurricanes or tornados).  Resilience is defined as the capacity to resume everyday commercial and social functioning following an adverse event. We draw a distinction between proactive resilience, which emphasizes adaptation and transformation, and reactive resilience, which emphasizes resistance and recovery. We also distinguish between the direct effects of climate and environmental threats – such as those cited above – and indirect effects – such as supply chain disruptions leading to materials and food shortages, and increased prices.

Important considerations for a Resilience Medicine assessment include preexisting community capital (e.g the links between citizens, current social networks) and institutional capacity (formal and informal organizations and the links between them). Different stakeholder groups are relevant, e.g. local government, civil society organizations, and citizen groups, and each is consulted.

Numerous data sources are accessed to define the scale and scope of place-based resilience, e.g. satellite data relating to the built environment, sensor data relating to air quality and heat/humidity, and volunteered geographical information relating to neighborhood or city-wide mobility (obtained via cell phones). Once resilience levels are estimated for specific places and populations under study, consultations with decision-makers and local residents take place to formulate a plan of action. This plan is designed to increase the degree of resilience to climate and environmental threats and challenges, and help protect human health and community assets, and promote disaster risk reduction. Such strategic plans might encompass recommendations regarding

·      green space, shade and the urban forest

·      storm water management and domestic water tanks  

·      community cooling centers

·      solar panels on domestic dwellings and government buildings

·      community gardens for sustainable food production

·      bike lanes, walking trails and other mobility options

·      urban and rural building codes and nature-based planning and design.

The impact of these strategic plans can be measured via the degree of adoption into urban policy,  integration into citizen science activities, and the involvement of community groups (e.g. those dedicated to conservation and biodiversity).

A Resilience Medicine paradigm operationalizes the principles of Planetary Health, population health and environmental justice. It recognizes that the impacts and effects of climate change and weather-related disasters are unevenly distributed across geographies and populations. Further, a Resilience Medicine strategic plan is designed to address these inequities in the formulation of its solutions and in its methodologies (e.g. the inclusion of diverse groups in the on-going dialogue).

To discuss the services we offer, please contact suzanne@rise.health