On October 16, 2024, the UP Resilience Institute – Research and Creative Work Division (UP RI-RCW) briefed the Brgy. UP Campus Health Unit about the Center for Climate and Health on Global Research on Disasters (CORD) Project on Dengue, with Barangay Kagawad Ana Falcon, Barangay Administrator Melody Villegas, and the city and barangay health workers present during the initial talks.
CORD Research Core Coordinator Ramon Caballero led the presentation by introducing the project’s background and its main objectives. He emphasized that the project focuses on protecting health and building resilience against climate-related health impacts. Since climate change intensifies hydrometeorological phenomena such as typhoons and heavy rainfall, the breeding rate of container-breeding mosquitoes increases as well, causing a higher chance of disease transmission as in the case of dengue.
In urban areas like the Brgy. UP Campus, a higher dengue incidence is prevailing as water stagnation in containers opens more breeding sites for Aedes aegpyti mosquitoes, the carrier of dengue virus (DENV) which causes mild to severe dengue fever. The historical dengue data from the Quezon City Epidemiological and Surveillance Division revealed that there is a recurring case of Brgy. UP Campus as a dengue hotspot in District 4 of Quezon City. Caballero pointed out this as a strong reason why the CORD Dengue Project has selected Brgy. UP Campus is one of the project sites, citing that the project should be urgently done in collaboration with the community members to ensure their own welfare.
RCW Chief Science Research Specialist Dennis de la Torre seconded this by acknowledging that the participation of barangay leaders and residents is essential for the effective implementation of a dengue prevention and control program. He discussed the ‘Pathways to Impact’ of the CORD Project, highlighting the specific outcome, output, and indicator of the project. CORD seeks to come up with a community-based decision-support tool (output), a map-based platform highlighting the areas with high dengue cases. This would prompt the local government to alert their community members and take preventive measures as urgent actions. In the long run, it is expected that this will build a healthy and dengue-resilient community (outcome) by maintaining a reduced number of dengue cases (indicator).
Ongoing activities of CORD, and the target points of collaboration with Brgy. UP Campus was also discussed. RCW Director Dr. Glecy Atienza leads CORD in making creative communication tools through ‘MoskiToks,’ a children’s TV show for dengue awareness. This is co-produced with TVUP and will be aired through different social media platforms. Dr. Atienza said that once finished, the materials can be shared and disseminated by the Brgy. UP Campus among its youth sector for better awareness of dengue, how they can protect themselves from it, and how they can help the community through youth-led actions.
Caballero ended the presentation with a general list of project targets with the Brgy. UP Campus. This includes assisting in the dissemination of IEC materials for dengue awareness campaigns, full cooperation in implementing dengue prevention and control programs within the barangay and taking part in capacity-building and knowledge-transfer on anticipatory action-driven programs, among others. The Brgy. UP Campus Health Unit pledges to collaborate once the community engagement of the project takes off.
The initial talks ended on a high note, with both the Brgy. UP Campus and the UP RI-CORD Team looking forward to meeting again to polish specific steps. An onboarding and project launching event will be organized in November which will convene all the partner communities and organizations for the CORD Project.