Dr. ZHANG Ying

Student of The University of Adelaide, Australia
Exchange to Shandong Normal University, China

Fellowship project:
To help older Chinese people better adapt to climate change and extremes

Climate change and population ageing are two emerging global public health threats in the 21st century. This project addresses both issues in China. Evidence shows that older people are among the most vulnerable to climate change and extremes. This project aims to build community resilience to climate change through understanding older people’s perceptions on health risks from climate change and engaging stakeholders for ageing health in a warming climate in China. With the support of the Fellowship, fieldwork in Shandong Province of China has been conducted, including a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews and focus groups with older participants and local stakeholders such as government officers, doctors, and nursing home managers.

To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate older people’s perceptions of health risk and impact of climate change and extremes in both urban and rural regions of China, and the first to identify adaptation barriers and enablers through stakeholder engagement. The findings of the project have been presented at the National Climate Change Adaptation Conference 2013 in Sydney and the 9th APRU Research Symposium on Multi-Hazards around Pacific Rim 2013 in Taipei, and the first Australia-China Centre for Public Health Research Forum 2014 in Brisbane. Some of the findings are going to be published as a chapter in the book entitled “Urbanization and Health in China” (Imperial College Press, London. 2015. In press.)

Following this project, further funding has been successfully applied to continue the research in the field in other regions of China. For example, fieldwork focusing on older people’s health in the changing environment in a Zhuang village in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in South Central China has been conducted in 2014. In addition, a multinational project on empowering older people for better climate change adaption in the Asia-Pacific region may be developed based on these pilot projects in order to help the most vulnerable population in a changing climate and environment.

I am thankful for the Endeavour Australia Cheung Kong Research Fellowship for allowing me to undertake such research.

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