Climate change is expected to cause extensive shifts in the epidemiology of infectious and vector-borne diseases. Scenarios on the effects of climate change typically attribute altered distribution of communicable diseases to a rise in average temperature and altered incidence of infectious diseases to weather extremes.

Recent evaluations of the effects of climate change on Hawaii have not explored this link. It may be expected that Hawaii’s natural geography and robust water, sanitation, and health care infrastructure renders residents less vulnerable to many threats that are the focus on smaller, lesser developed, and more vulnerable Pacific islands. In addition, Hawaii’s communicable disease surveillance and response system can act rapidly to counter increases in any disease above baseline and to redirect resources to deal with changes, particularly outbreaks due to exotic pathogens.

The evidence base examined in this article consistently revealed very low climate sensitivity with respect to infectious and mosquito-borne diseases.

A community resilience model is recommended to increase adaptive capacity for all possible climate change impacts rather an approach that focuses specifically on communicable diseases. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:797–804)

We aimed to explore how perceived safety after terrorism is connected to views on security measures and emergency preparedness in a workplace setting.

Using a questionnaire-based, cross-sectional study of ministerial employees in Norway who were targeted in a terrorist attack in 2011 (n=3344), we investigated how employees’ perceived safety at work 9 to 10 months after the attack was associated with their perceptions of whether security measures were sufficiently prioritized at work, whether there had been sufficient escape and evacuation training, and whether they were confident with evacuation procedures.

We found strong evidence of increasing perceived safety at work the more employees believed security measures were sufficiently prioritized at work (partially confounded by post-traumatic stress disorder), and the better their knowledge of evacuation procedures (modified by gender and education).

The present study suggests that employers may enhance perceived safety at work for terror-exposed employees by showing a commitment to security measures and by ensuring employees know evacuation procedures well. More research is needed to investigate causality patterns behind the associations found in this cross-sectional study. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:805–811)