Fleta Page
5 November 2026: Building social connections and resilience was a recurring theme at the annual HEAL Conference’s ACT Community of Practice (CoP) session on Monday as various stakeholders, from the ACT government to community groups, discussed pathways to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The sixth annual conference of the Healthy Environment and Lives (HEAL) National Research Network, whose coordinating centre has been based at the º£½ÇÉäÇø since 2024, continues through the week, with state chapters holding face-to-face sessions before an online conference, which this year also included an Asia-Pacific session with international partners.
The meeting was the first since the release of the new ACT Climate Strategy 2026-2036, and Chris Finnigan from the ACT Government’s Climate Change and Energy policy branch gave an update on the roll-out of the Strategy’s first action plan, including the key adaptation policies being prioritised.
The CoP meeting included presentations and a Q&A session with the expert panel, before attendees broke into groups to turn ideas into potential actionable items. HEAL Network Director Professor Sotiris Vardoulakis said the CoP enables the Network to act as a touch point for community groups to feed into research and policy.
“It's very important for us to get inspiration and some practical ideas and engagement. We want to make sure that the work we are doing is relevant and resonates with the community and policymakers,” he said.
“That's the purpose of HEAL. We are not in the business of just writing academic papers and producing research for research’s sake. We want to have impact and be useful to our community, to the ACT government, and to organisations here – and nationally as well.
“We bring in students, we learn from the community, learn from First Nations people. That's the way of co-designing and co-creating research.”
Ngunnawal elder and ACT Climate Change Council member Stephen Mudford performed a Rite of Passage and sat on the expert panel, advocating for enhancements to Lake Burley Griffin to improve water quality through all the linked waterways.
Greens MLA Andrew Braddock gave an opening address, in which he applauded HEAL's research into using public libraries as Community Resilience Centres in the face of climate change, and raised transport emissions as a priority area for the ACT to target.
Ravi Krishnamurthy, president of the Australian Multicultural Action Network (AMAN) brought the perspective of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Canberrans to the panel, noting that climate events affect different communities unequally, due to varying linguistic skills when navigating warnings and advice, financial ability to run cooling systems, and community support.
That community support was a recurring theme in climate change adaptation, as feelings of connection are vital for building human resilience, which all participants noted was an important goal amid a broader trend of social isolation.
Megan Taylor from Canberra Health Services (CHS) presented on the Disaster Ready Fund project she has been leading for the last three years, building the ACT’s capacity and psychosocial resilience in a changing climate.
“Disaster readiness is not only the physical preparation – it also has to be the psychosocial preparation,” she said.
“We know that climate-related effects and disasters impact people's mental health and wellbeing, and we also know that those impacts are not equal … People with mental health issues will experience worsening mental health conditions during disasters. We also know that the rates of domestic and family violence increase by seven to eightfold in the context of disasters.”
She also pointed to the climate anxiety experienced by more and more young people, and noted “community connection and collective efficacy are protective factors”.
Mijica Lus, the president of the UN Young Professionals Network ACT and 2024 ACT Young Woman of the Year, spoke on the importance of involving young people in conversations and decisions on the multi-generational issue, and said young people can also bring a lens of creativity to the table.
The event’s co-convenor, Associate Professor Ro McFarlane, also a member of the ACT Climate Change Council, said, “this year we have a new ACT climate policy and there are challenges to making real progress that is fair, equitable and that builds physical and social resilience".
“The conversations we are having here build those connections, trust and productive relationships across sectors and across communities. This is at the heart of what is required to build healthy environments and lives in a changing climate," she said.
The conference is the last one under the initial phase of the HEAL Network, which was established in 2021 with a $10 million grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
“The current phase of HEAL is finishing in April,” Professor Vardoulakis said. “But we will certainly carry on one way or the other. We have some co-funding from the university. We have a number of other projects, so we will carry on with the momentum of HEAL."