Jess Dicken

Jess Dicken is a public health expert with over a decade’s experience in senior practice roles within the NHS and local authority and, more recently, as a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Environment and Human Health (ECEHH). She is interested in the health and wellbeing impacts of climate change, creating equitable sustainable futures, co-design and translating research in practice and policy. For BlueAdapt she is working on the case study of LCAT (Local Climate Adaptation Tool) which seeks to provide local decision makers (local authorities, NHS bodies) with a simple tool that provides future climate models, subsequent health impacts and evidence-based solutions for action. The tool was highly commended in the international Climate Challenge Cup as part of COP-26. She leads the public health approach on LCAT, including the projects’ enquiry into equitable adaptation, health inequality and climate justice. She leads on LCAT’s stakeholder engagement and co-design process, working in partnership with local and national policy-makers and practitioners to design a tool that meets their needs while understanding the barriers and levers to climate adaptation action. In addition to the main tool, she leads the development of a co-designed learning resource to help local policy-makers and practitioners understand climate adaptation.