Since March 2024, the Center for Climate and health on glObal Research on Disasters (CORD) consortium started having an online monthly meeting centered on “deep dive” discussions of different topics. It aims to enrich member universities’ research and community engagement strategies for their respective CORD projects. Several sessions are hosted by specific team/s given their specific field of expertise and interests.
March
The first session was held on March 18, 2024, which gave an overview of all the model types within the consortium. The researchers from the National University of Lesotho, Tufts University (United States), Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique), and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology have discussed crop modeling, epidemiological disease modeling, systems dynamics modeling, and dynamic flood risk modeling, respectively.
April
On April 17, 2024, the UP Resilience Institute – Research and Creative Work Division (UP RI-RCW) Team led the presentation and workshop on Disease mapping for prevention and control, specifically for the dengue disease. This is in relation to the CORD Research Core Specific Aim 3-2 which would like to determine how the Philippine national and local health governance enables anticipatory action during dengue outbreaks.
Chief Science Research Specialist Dennis G. de la Torre initiated the presentation with an overview of dengue in the global and Philippine context. He continued the discussion on where to outsource the data on communicable diseases for further studies, emphasizing the need for a more accessible data repository from credible sources such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) and World Health Organization (WHO) for global data, and the Department of Health (DOH) Epidemiology Bureau for the local data.
Relating the talks about disease data, Mr. de la Torre has stated that disease modeling provides a more specific application as a decision-support tool for disease prevention and control programs at a more localized scale. This is in comparison to contemporary climate modeling which uses the same data requirements as the disease models although with higher data and technical requirements.
The April session concluded with a workshop on the challenges of accessing data per country. It tackled each country’s existing data policies on data management and protection and sought inputs from meeting participants on what viable solutions could they suggest to bridge this gap.
Along with Mr. de la Torre, the presentation and workshop were prepared by RCW Junior Project Assistants Alexa Hernandez and Ramon Christopher Caballero. Director Dr. Glecy Atienza, Supervising Researcher Chris Sanchez from RCW, and Information Technology Officer Janice Aldea from NOAH WebGIS have also participated in the said session.
May
The University of Namibia and Makerere University (Uganda) hosted the May session which focused on qualitative research, mainly on how to conduct qualitative data collection methods and the prevailing issues in doing them. The researchers did a mock interview to simulate the ethical approach in dealing with a research participant.
After the discussions, the meeting participants were distributed into breakout rooms to have an opportunity to narrate their experiences with qualitative methods in their 4As projects. Participants were also asked to share any notable insight they have gained from their experiences that they would like to adapt or improve for their CORD projects.
The session concluded with a quick poll on what the CORD members would like to learn from their fellow consortium members. The option with the highest vote is ‘qualitative research design’, followed by ‘interview skills,’ and ‘qualitative analysis.’
June
On June 10, 2024, the consortium had an insightful sharing session on each universities’ innovation in community-engaged research. the UP Resilience Institute – Research and Creative Work Division (UP RI-RCW) Team has presented their flagship project, “Inn Lab na Tayo!: Innovation Laboratory for Community Resilience” which champions the narratives about climate resilience through creative communication campaigns.
“Inn Lab na Tayo!” is composed of several components, including “Panahon Na!” which uses social media platforms to disseminate important concepts related to climate resilience. During the presentation, an original song composition of the same title was played which mainly calls for people to observe what is happening to the environment and to take immediate action to save it.
Another part of the presentation was the youth engagement being done through the youth organization UP RI YouthMappers. This is a good example of how the youth sector is empowered and can be mobilized for different research works. The UP RI looks forward to engaging the organization for data collection in Year 2 (2024) of the CORD research project.
Consequently, RCW is determined to launch “Mok Toks” this year. This children’s TV show project will use puppets to disseminate information on dengue for children ages seven and above. The consortium members have received the RCW presentation well, and they look forward to collaborating with them in the future.
July
The most recent session of the CORD monthly meeting was held on July 10, 2024, regarding integrated modeling of hazards and impacts. The researchers from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) have shown their current works on integrated different model paradigms which take on complex systems with different variables as inputs. These models can be a great starting point in decision-making for anticipatory action across different CORD projects.