Discussion on Climate Change and Health with Stakeholders in Karangasem Regency

The Koneksi Research team Bali, composed of faculty members from the Master's and Bachelor's Programs in Public Health at Udayana University, organized focused group discussion (FGD) on January 18, 2024. The workshop brought together three participant groups: stakeholders, implementers, and community representatives. Regarding climate change, the invited stakeholders were diverse, including the District Health Office, Agriculture Department, Disaster Management Agency, Public Works Department, Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, Academia, Environmental Department, and Regional Planning Agency. Meanwhile, the implementers' group included representatives from 12 Community Health Centers (Puskesmas) in Karangasem Regency, and the community group consisted of environmental NGOs, farmers' representatives, and climate change’s affected community members.

At the beginning of the event, the head of the Unud research team provided an overview of the research activities and conducted a Q&A session before initiating discussions in three separate groups. Each group's discussions covered aspects such as vulnerability and risks, policies and regulations, human and financial resource capacity, service provision, and solutions or innovations related to climate change. The interactive discussions in each group were facilitated by the Unud Koneksi team and were also attended online by the Koneksi teams from West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and East Nusa Tenggara (NTT). With the participants' consent, all policy stakeholder group discussion activities were recorded on video, intending to serve as a learning resource for the NTB and NTT teams.

The activities ran smoothly, thanks to thorough preparations made days in advance, including instrument preparation and aligning perceptions among the research team members at the Unud campus. In addition to the FGD, quantitative data related to climate change at the Puskesmas/service level and various agencies, such as BPS (Statistics Indonesia), Environmental Department, and climate data, were collected.

Furthermore, in-depth interviews were conducted with policy stakeholders to gather more profound information. The multi-methods being performed to ensure the comprehensiveness of data. Following this activity is the preparation for similar events in NTB and NTT.

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