Abstract:

Locally and globally, climate change is having a profound and widespread impact on public health. This complex change is challenging the discipline's conventional wisdom, even its role and mission in today's society. For public health (including public mental health), as for other sectors (environment, public security, etc...) the menaces of global warming present specific challenges : (1) preparing practitioners/professionals for the leading role they will be called to play in the management of risks and impacts related to climate change, (2) renewing their professional competences, and (3) developing new ways of thinking, communicating and acting in the face of mental health vulnerabilities and biopsychosocial impacts linked to climate change. In the general context of the globalization of knowledge and technologies, and in the specific context of the struggle to manage climate change, it has been recommended at the local (The 2006-2012 Quebec Action Plan on Climate Change) and global (Article 6 of the United Nations Climate Convention) levels to reinforce the adaptive capacities of ''systems'' (health, rural and urban collectivities, regions, etc.) impacted by climate change by means of professional training and knowledge transfer. Ours is a mental health perspective, and so we speak of climate change-oriented mental health. Within this perspective, a chair has been established in eEcolearning, Mental Health, and Climate in a collaboration between the Quebec National Institute of Public Health and the Psychiatry Department of the University of Montreal. The chair's mission is to explore ways to apply pertinent knowledge to the management of climate change-related impacts on health. More specifically, the chair studies the transfrontier application of knowledge in the contexts of climate-based health, climate-based psychopathology, climate-produced stress and vulnerability. The chair's program includes (1) research on the application of knowledge to climate change adaptations; (2) eTraining and eEcolearning for mental health professionals and public health professionals (Web 3.0); (3) increasing public awareness and offering support to vulnerable individuals, organizations, communities and regions. In this communication the author makes a detailed presentation of the chair's program, perspectives, challenges and contributions to the new research field of ecological mental health. The program's innovative, transfrontier vision of knowledge transfer is presented and explained. The chair's primary mission and secondary objectives are described, and examples drawn from five program axes are given. Individual and collective actors who are attracted to transdisciplinarity in public health/mental health and who are open to innovations and diversity are invited to go beyond their disciplinary, sectorial, geographic and cultural limits in order to participate in new ''complex collaborations'' in research/education in eEcohealth, within our program or elsewhere. Those who are interested in the promotion of a climate change-oriented mental/public health that is objective, equitable and sustainable are invited to participate in the evolving long-term activities of this chair in ''complex collaborative transfer''.

Keywords:

EHealth, Adaptation to Climate Change, Public Health, Mental Health, Transfrontier Ecolearning, Transfrontier Knowledge Transfer, Web 3.0, Globalization.