The project "Assessing Flooding Impact of Households within the Rakai Cohort in Uganda" is a collaborative initiative between the University of Michigan and the Rakai Health Sciences Program (RHSP) aimed at validating and administering climate shock surveys to evaluate the impacts of extreme weather events, with a particular focus on flooding, on household health in southern Uganda. This study adapts climate shock surveys previously developed in Kenya and Bangladesh to assess climate risks, adaptation behaviors, and health outcomes related to respiratory and water-borne diseases.
The project will enroll 500 households from the Rakai Community Cohort Study (RCCS) in a year-long nested longitudinal study to capture recent and future flooding impacts. Coordinated with research efforts in Kenya and Bangladesh, the project seeks to build climate change and health research capacity in Uganda and ultimately integrate the validated survey into global environmental surveillance systems, advancing a data-driven approach to developing environmental health interventions amidst climate risks.