The Call

The report Advancing Health and Community Resilience in the Gulf of Mexico Region: A Roadmap for Progress outlines actions that can reduce the impacts of disasters on communities. Among these actions is a call for building the capacity of communities to collaborate on issues that affect their health and resilience before, during, and after disasters. Specifically, the report calls for collaborations that

• are developed with communities,

• focus on specific priorities,

• support learning and engagement,

• integrate with existing community activities,

• build on the strengths within the communities, and

• bring in new resources (such as data and funding).

Lastly, the report encourages the use of innovative and potentially transformative approaches to capacity building.

The Initiative

The Adaptive Capacities for Transformation (ACT) Initiative leverages science, collaboration, and strategic investments for communities to promote health and resilience in disaster adaptation.

Phase 1: Planning

The ACT Initiative works with communities in Houston, TX, New Orleans, LA, and Mobile, AL to create a science-based and community-driven framework of priorities for What Communities Need to Deal with Disasters that affect their health and resilience. Using ACT’s scientific methodology, the GRP engages a diverse group of stakeholders in developing a framework that is a consensus of their individual priorities with the most relevant and update-to-date literature; local policies, plans, programs, etc.; as well as the priorities of the GRP. The resulting framework illustrates how stakeholders, as a group, believe that priorities relate to one another and work together to help their communities deal with disasters, as well as which priorities are assets, and which ones are gaps. As such, this framework can be utilized to inform calls for funding for projects that utilize assets to fill gaps and build adaptive capacities.

Lessons learned from Phase 1 will be used by the GRP and its partners to inform future investments (such as Phase 2) that can support disaster-affected communities in the US Gulf Coast and beyond.

Phase 2: Implementation

To be developed with participants.

Phase 3: Evaluation

To be developed with participants.

Phase 4: Sustainability

To be developed with participants.

ACT is funded by the GRP with additional support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.