Priorities for Bolstering Public Health Resilience in the Context of Climate Change in Dominica and Puerto Rico.

Caribbean small island developing states are highly exposed to climate change impacts. Incorporating weather and climate information into public health decisions can promote resilience to climate change's adverse health effects, but regionally it is not common practice. We implemented a project to enhance dialogue between climate and public health specialists in Puerto Rico and Dominica.

Co-learning during the co-creation of a dengue early warning system for the health sector in Barbados.

Over the past decade, the Caribbean region has been challenged by compound climate and health hazards, including tropical storms, extreme heat and droughts and overlapping epidemics of mosquito-borne diseases, including dengue, chikungunya and Zika. Early warning systems (EWS) are a key climate change adaptation strategy for the health sector. An EWS can integrate climate information in forecasting models to predict the risk of disease outbreaks several weeks or months in advance.

Building resilience to mosquito-borne diseases in the Caribbean.

Small island developing states in the Caribbean are among the most vulnerable countries on the planet to climate variability and climate change. In the last 3 decades, the Caribbean region has undergone frequent and intense heat waves, storms, floods, and droughts. This has had a detrimental impact on population health and well-being, including an increase in infectious disease outbreaks.

Spatiotemporal Tools for Emerging and Endemic Disease Hotspots in Small Areas: An Analysis of Dengue and Chikungunya in Barbados, 2013-2016.

Dengue fever and other febrile mosquito-borne diseases place considerable health and economic burdens on small island nations in the Caribbean. Here, we used two methods of cluster detection to find potential hotspots of transmission of dengue and chikungunya in Barbados, and to assess the impact of input surveillance data and methodology on observed patterns of risk. Using Moran's I and spatial scan statistics, we analyzed the geospatial and temporal distribution of disease cases and rates across Barbados for dengue fever in 2013-2016, and a chikungunya outbreak in 2014.

Co-developing climate services for public health: Stakeholder needs and perceptions for the prevention and control of Aedes-transmitted diseases in the Caribbean.

Background: Small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean region are challenged with managing the health outcomes of a changing climate. Health and climate sectors have partnered to co-develop climate services to improve the management of emerging arboviral diseases such as dengue fever, for example, through the development of climate-driven early warning systems. The objective of this study was to identify health and climate stakeholder perceptions and needs in the Caribbean, with respect to the development of climate services for arboviruses.

Nonlinear and delayed impacts of climate on dengue risk in Barbados: A modelling study.

Background: Over the last 5 years (2013-2017), the Caribbean region has faced an unprecedented crisis of co-occurring epidemics of febrile illness due to arboviruses transmitted by the Aedes sp. mosquito (dengue, chikungunya, and Zika). Since 2013, the Caribbean island of Barbados has experienced 3 dengue outbreaks, 1 chikungunya outbreak, and 1 Zika fever outbreak.

Zika Virus Outbreak, Barbados, 2015-2016.

Barbados is a Caribbean island country of approximately 285,000 people, with a thriving tourism industry. In 2015, Zika spread rapidly throughout the Americas, and its proliferation through the Caribbean islands followed suit. Barbados reported its first confirmed autochthonous Zika transmission to the Pan American Health Organization in January 2016, a month before the global public health emergency was declared.

Outbreak of Zika Virus Infections, Dominica, 2016.

In February 2016, the World Health Organization declared the pandemic of Zika virus a public health emergency. On March 4, 2016, Dominica reported its first autochthonous Zika virus disease case; subsequently, 1,263 cases were reported. We describe the outbreak through November 2016, when the last known case was reported.