Kyle King: [00:00:00] When a complex crisis strikes, leadership is tested. Decisions must be made in seconds. And the right call can mean the difference between disaster and resilience. So are you really ready for the moment when everything is on the line? Welcome to Season 4 of the Crisis Led Podcast, the show where we break down the toughest challenges in crisis management, emergency response, and risk leadership.
Kyle King: And with every episode, we go beyond the headlines, dissecting real world complex crisis with those who were on the front lines. That includes leaders, decision makers, and experts who've navigated unprecedented challenges and lived to tell the story. This season, we're pushing the boundaries. From cybersecurity threats that can cripple entire nations, to high stakes disaster response, and the unseen risks lurking in global supply chains.
Kyle King: Season 4 is all about new frontiers of complex crisis leadership. We're bringing you The exclusive interviews with top emergency planners, intelligence insiders, and world class strategists who will reveal what it really takes to prepare for, respond to, [00:01:00] and recover from a complex crisis. But that's not all.
Kyle King: This season we're introducing something new. Short form episodes packed with insights, perspectives, and commentary on the most pressing issues facing our communities today. These episodes will complement our deep dive interviews, giving you timely analysis and actionable takeaways in a fast paced format.
Kyle King: So if you lead, manage risk, or simply want to understand how the world stays standing when everything falls apart, then this season is for you. So hit subscribe, follow us on your favorite podcast platform, and join us as we pull back the curtain on the world of complex crisis leadership. Because in a crisis, knowledge isn't just power, it's survival.
Kyle King: So Nathan, thanks for joining us. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks. Happy to be here. So before we get started, maybe just a quick background and introduction from your side about, where you're from, what you're working on and, the different challenges that you face today,
Nathan Gross: So I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, or that's [00:02:00] where I currently reside. I've been in the, the field of emergency management, public health now for a number of years, and I've been involved in everything from local government, state federal I've done some federal contracting as well as worked in the aviation side of emergency management, ultimately, my goal is to kind of, Look at ways we can intersect these fields, public health and emergency management to address some of the larger issues that we have coming up in the future.
Nathan Gross: And in this case climate change, I think is, you know, I joke, but I'm also very serious when I say this The reason why I went to emergency management is there is a great degree of job security and climate change is part of that job security. it's a sad factor to say that, but it's also very true.
Nathan Gross: I knew that I would never not have work because of climate change. And so. With that in mind, it falls on emergency managers of public health to really emphasize this as [00:03:00] a, as a true emergency management issue in a public health issue , to address.
Kyle King: Yeah, thanks for that. Largely, I would agree. I think we're already in these times of really complex crisis, exacerbated by a changing climate. And regardless of the causes of the changing climate, Things are getting more complex these days, right?
Kyle King: hurricanes hitting the United States flooding and wildfires and extreme wildfires and all these sort of things going on that we obviously there's there's something there that we have to deal with. And I think we can all acknowledge that and work with that.
Kyle King: when we talk about this and the aspects of climate change and when developing the course of crisis like you had mentioned something called social determinants and and I think it's important to sort of unpack that and talk about that a little bit as we get started with the podcast today, let's just take a second to sort of define that from your perspective. And then what that means for the field of emergency management.
Nathan Gross: so social determinants of health, I can give you the dictionary definition or the academic definition first and then kind of go from there, but they're essentially the non medical factors that influence health outcomes.
Nathan Gross: Okay. [00:04:00] So that's things like your economic stability, education, access and quality. Neighborhood and built environment. So for those that haven't had that course built environment is the areas the city's built around you, the buildings around you, that type of structure.
Nathan Gross: And then it's also like social and community context, meaning things associated with your attachments within the social sphere. So do you have a support network? are you plugged into the community? All those things are essentially playing into how well, you know, You are going to function with yourself from the health perspective.
Nathan Gross: You know, if you don't have those things, that's makes it harder for you to navigate the healthcare system, to get access to healthcare. we often think about it as an individual's choice, but it's also Contingent upon the conditions that we're in. social determinants of health constantly are playing on that.
Nathan Gross: So you take like a homeless individual, for instance, and there's social determinants of health. [00:05:00] They have so many typically they have so many issues. Where they are vulnerable due to lacking more positive aspects or protective factors like, economic stability.
Nathan Gross: They oftentimes might lack in education, access and quality. they're definitely going to be lacking in terms of being able to go to the doctor randomly. Just because they have a cold, they're probably going to end up in the ER.
Nathan Gross: Obviously, we know that the neighborhood and built environment is going to be a significant issue for them. And then finally, the social and community context. the only support they may have is from other people that are also operating in the same sphere. And they don't have a lot to be able to support either.
Nathan Gross: So, it's a very challenging situation for those individuals. And I think that issue actually bleeds into what we need to look at when we talk about climate change, this is just an example from the U. S. side, but you want to start looking at individuals in climate vulnerable areas [00:06:00] experiencing comparable situations due to warfare Or other humanitarian crises. It's a very similar circumstance. in some cases, this is even worse because you had the warfare component. Right? So we have to look at it with this in mind as this emergent issue that these people are so vulnerable and social determinants of health will make it worse.
Nathan Gross: And then you throw in climate change, which just exacerbates all those factors. it's going to become a sort of domino effect where things will just progressively get harder for them. And as an emergency management professional or public health professional, it's getting harder for you to
Kyle King: Yeah, that's very interesting because we've, we've seen in the last few years and some of the work that we're doing and expansion upon that idea and looking at more societal resilience writ large, blending into the aspects and even FEMA had released this resilience maturity piece.
Kyle King: Framework and model is incorporating systems into this in terms of community resilience and that's also very interesting because it's starting [00:07:00] to recognize the impact of our environment. Now, for our military colleagues, we would frame this as if we were, military forces going somewhere.
Kyle King: This is our operational environment being in the middle of Afghanistan, middle of nowhere, shaped outcomes in terms of medical and health and access to medical facilities and everything else that goes along with that. And it's also interesting, and it just sparks in my mind when I'm listening to you talk about it, if you remember that heat wave that hit Europe a few years ago, and then like, you know, a hundred and something or more people died in France, simply just because the environment, the social environment, It's largely no air conditioning and things like that just wasn't really incorporated into society.
Kyle King: And yet that had a determinate outcome on a significant change in the heat wave, right? And inside of Europe. So climate sort of changed leading to more extensive heat waves, more extreme wildfires, and then yet the environment that people live in, in a moderate environment, was built and accustomed to be just for that, and when that climate changes, it's no longer feasible.
Kyle King: Does that sound sort of right to what you're talking about?
Nathan Gross: Yeah, I mean, that's a good [00:08:00] example of the build environment component and how it, you know, depending on the level of social community context we have, like social attachments that could have acted as a protective factor in this case with the build environment piece it wasn't something that, there had been a lot of experience with previously in Europe where individuals, you know, air conditioning wasn't really something that, you know, People are that are concerned over with Europe.
Nathan Gross: That's just not something that they've had to deal with a lot. infrastructure on the individual level wasn't there as much. the responses typically in the, in the U. S. does this frequently. And I can talk from my own experience cooling centers or heating centers for different weather especially, where I'm at, which is, Atlanta, Georgia. in Atlanta, Georgia, you, you know, we have both throughout the year because we have, you know, pretty severe amounts of heat.
Nathan Gross: So you combine that with the urban landscape that you have, and in areas where you don't have tree cover, You can have the heat island effect, which we'll talk a little bit more in the class about. And so naturally you need some cooling [00:09:00] centers for, especially like homeless individuals, like I mentioned, or low income individuals who may not be able to afford air conditioning, Atlanta, Georgia is not cheap when it comes to utilities in the summer and likewise in the winter, because we have infrequent really cold weather people are unprepared for that as well.
Nathan Gross: emergency management here often has heating centers that they will open up during the winter for those individuals. in Europe, just because they, typically did not have those levels of extremes. they were not prepared for this level of heat wave. as a result, you saw many, many deaths.
Kyle King: let's stay on that topic for a second. these social determinants of health and the intersection of climate and climate resilience specifically in your field of public health.
Kyle King: And so, we mentioned a couple of examples and some factors that we'd have to plan for if you're coming from the emergency management. profession, but what role do these play in planning for future challenges? So if we know like in your case with Atlanta the hot and the cold season the summer and the winter There's certain aspects, but i'm sure it goes beyond [00:10:00] that just aside from the centers and there's a lot more that has to be considered especially the longer you look into the future So what sort of role does that play in your planning and the things that you think about?
Nathan Gross: Yeah. So actually my interest in, how this will interplay really started with looking at the humanitarian challenges when it comes to complex humanitarian emergencies. So when we think about complex humanitarian emergencies, those are situations with.
Nathan Gross: Individuals in a cascading set of emergencies, usually with a warfare component attached to it. So I wrote my thesis on, on the topic of looking at. Intersection of climate change and public health and the context of complex humanitarian emergencies.
Nathan Gross: So, naturally, this is, my topic of interest for sure, but social determinants of health is at the core of the whole thing. the reality is, is while, the U. S. or more developed countries will experience climate change and we're, are going to have problems with climate change.
Nathan Gross: People that are really going to be [00:11:00] affected are going to be the people in very vulnerable areas already experiencing disasters or are vulnerable from the social determinants of health scale that's going to be in the U. S. as well. But it's especially going to be in those countries that are still in underdeveloped stage or just now getting the developing stage or of course coastal, you know.
Nathan Gross: So that said, when we look at how we address climate resilience and how to plan for this. We really need to look with a great degree of detail At those areas that are vulnerable from the country level and local levels even before we get down to the individual.
Nathan Gross: once we assess that you look at climate projection modeling to really get an idea of where that's going to be. We then need to say, okay, this community is going to get hit by climate change, potentially very hard. Who are the most vulnerable members of those communities you can use social determinants of health.
Nathan Gross: That's a framework for that. that's why, I mentioned the homeless individuals, are one of the major groups. That are going to be the most exposed when we think [00:12:00] about climate change, you're also going to have climate refugees, which is individuals that are going to be displaced from their home.
Nathan Gross: That are going to have to migrate to other areas as a result of climate change. In fact, Atlanta, Georgia is going to receive a ton of climate refugees by 2050. That's the projections from the coastal areas of the US. And so the US needs to be ready to adopt their cities for this influx of refugees and particularly Atlanta has been doing some initiatives towards that.
Nathan Gross: But I would argue that there's a lot of room to grow because it's a sizable amount of individuals. the numbers I heard expected the metro area to get over 10, 000, 000 and that was even before you factor in the complete numbers of climate refugees.
Nathan Gross: That's just normal projections. So it's, it's it's going to be a real challenge. We have to think about the changing mobility of population groups. We need to think about the fact that things that we've taken for granted as being the norms of whether that's economic stability, neighborhood and built environment [00:13:00] and the social cohesions they may not be there anymore.
Nathan Gross: And so we have to factor in how those things are going to change and who doesn't have that now. And who's likely not to have that
Kyle King: in the future. and that's a really good point on the migration piece, because there's a separation between okay, there's immigration, there's migration.
Kyle King: And of course, you have internally displaced persons from a massive climate related disaster. forcing a, displacement of a population. We evacuate Florida, just as an example, long term displacement leads into migration, because there's no ability to move back home, then you're talking about millions of people displaced and having to migrate more centrally into the United States, away from the coastal areas, because of exacerbation of climate situations and the environment.
Kyle King: And so that's obviously going to require massive investment in terms of public funding, because it's not, I mean, the way you're talking about it, it's everything, right? So long term displacement requires, social cohesion, requires an integration ability, which means, the school [00:14:00] systems, the jobs, the bureaucracy in the administration of a city.
Kyle King: To be able to handle the, you know, all that goes with that and the long tail of logistics, that's a significant investment as well, But if we focus on the health system component and public health component, what would you be looking at in terms of this forecast?
Kyle King: If somebody's like, okay, you know, we're gonna get millions of more people coming in to our community in the next sort of. 20 years or so. what is going through your mind? And why is this becoming increasingly important?
Nathan Gross: I definitely have my sort of wish list, that I don't think would happen.
Nathan Gross: But I do think, it's really important for public health and emergency management to work more in tandem to address some of these more systemic problems. We often think of emergency management as being a short term solution oriented group.
Nathan Gross: in some ways, we have some mitigation aspects to it, which is prevention aspects within the different phases, but we often don't associate it with, addressing [00:15:00] homelessness. But that is one thing that, should be in the forethought sometimes emergency management is going to have to cross over in that realm and work in tandem to address these, larger vulnerabilities that are there.
Nathan Gross: And I think we're kind of headed there, as you mentioned, with the systems frameworks that FEMA has been putting out and some other organizations with this emphasis on community resilience, it Tackles that, but we have to put that in the, as a, as a central piece as addressing the, the current vulnerabilities that do exist within the area.
Nathan Gross: So whether that's homelessness, whether that's income insecurity, whether that is , is there shelters even now for people where people are currently at, you know, it's it's hard to plan for the future if you can't address your current emergencies.
Nathan Gross: Right? So I think the first step is really okay. What can we do to make our areas more resilient? And how do we focus on. Making sure there's continuity and practice for the next 20, to 30 years that to [00:16:00] me is, probably the most important we can handle, one emergency that displaces the population about like 5 of population, but just double that, you know, and just assume that you're going to need more, I understand that resources are stretched thin for everybody. but the reality is, that planning needs to go into place there.
Nathan Gross: And the goal should be to have that in mind. I think we have an opportunity, not necessarily a taxation, if you will. When we think about climate change, we always think about it as this cost that, in order to do anything about it, we're going to invest all this money and we're going to get anything out of it.
There is a lot of opportunity within addressing climate change to build new structures innovate and give people a chance. To demonstrate their skills in ways that would allow for these people have income or jobs or have a new opportunities for growth.
Nathan Gross: I think these things actually play into each other. and build upon one [00:17:00] another to create more resilient systems By providing this opportunity in the past, you know, every time, you know, once again, speaking from the U. S. perspective, every time that there's been a challenge where we've said, hey, we need to, we need to address the submerging threat the U.
Nathan Gross: S. has has managed to do that. there's been a call to action and people have answered the challenge and as a result, more jobs, more sustainable structures or more structures in general the infrastructure was created and we just continue building on those things
Nathan Gross: You know, until we actually look at this as a challenge to be addressed and mobilize the community against it, I think that's what we're going to have difficulties with. I think that's part of the planning We got to actually say, this is the challenge that we need to face and we're going to mobilize community against it and we're going to work together to make sure we're ready.
Kyle King: Hey, just a quick break to remind you that the toughest decisions don't come with a warning. The people who handle them best are the ones who prepare in advance. At Crisis Lab, we explore how professionals across the various [00:18:00] different sectors think ahead, manage risk, and make sound decisions under pressure.
Kyle King: Get ahead of the next challenge. Check out crisislab. io today. So when I hear you talk about these things, it makes me very curious. And I just like to hear your opinion. Do we find that emergency management as a profession is getting more sort of left of emergency sort of more left of bang where we need to start discussing or being a voice in social policy and things like that, in terms of, because you mentioned like the homeless, crisis and that being a pretty extensive, vulnerable population to climate changes.
Kyle King: do we need to have more or be more vocal in these areas as opposed to where we typically? You know, within the emergency management community, I think a lot of people have ideas about cross cutting resilience but we are also siloed into our silos of excellence, I guess I would say, because we focus on response, or we focus on preparedness, or we're training an exercise person, or we do mitigation grants and things like that.
Kyle King: Or we're in a prevention field. we're siloed. [00:19:00] these things are not necessarily now emergencies. But by getting involved and having a voice in that process and developing policy and public policy, then you can sort of get more into that prevention slash mitigation space at a policy level, as opposed to threats and risk and hazards and assessments
Kyle King: What are your sort of thoughts on that?
Nathan Gross: Yeah. So at one point I was in AmeriCorps, I was working at a food bank and I remember I think it was my boss who had the slogan who was like, you know, his goal was to work himself out of a job. I want the same goal for every emergency management and public health individual.
Nathan Gross: I want the goal to be to work yourself out of the job. And so yeah, I think we need to be more comfortable with the notion that we want to fix things so that they're not there. I am firmly convinced that I will have job security, but my goal is to work myself out the job, you know there's no, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that there's going to still be emergencies and that whatever measures we take is not going to be sufficient to prevent them.
Nathan Gross: [00:20:00] But there's also a reason why FEMA has made an additional phase of emergency management, which is prevention, because they recognize the need for it too. this is the prevention piece right here. We need to be more vocal. let's address homelessness.
Nathan Gross: We should try to address any sort of systemic vulnerability that we can. it will make our job easier. from a practical note, it will make our jobs easier. if it makes our jobs easier, then why wouldn't we do it if we have the ability to do it?
Nathan Gross: And just be very clear about it. that's kind of my perspective on it. if It might be controversial to say, let's help those people. then like I said, let's be very practical about it.
Nathan Gross: if it can appeal to you on your value system, then let's just talk about from the business perspective, which is it's better business. To help homeless people get in a position where they're less vulnerable. we could talk all day about what we should be doing in terms of what the specific intervention should be.
Nathan Gross: And that's a totally valid debate, but to not address a [00:21:00] systemic vulnerability Seems like a bad decision, basically, I'll be honest.
Kyle King: one of the challenges too, there's as many perspectives on emergency management as there are emergency managers, you have the private sector, public sector, you have critical infrastructure, you have business continuity, you have all sorts of just different perspectives and functional areas, in this large field It's cross cutting across many domains. But in terms of public health, you know what you're facing and what you're looking at we talked about making difficult choices about how to deal with future challenges. Have we seen any successful implementation of a climate resilient strategy, in the public health domain?
Kyle King: Has there been something, just as an example, so we can better understand or quantify what we're talking about?
Nathan Gross: Yeah, so we'll talk a little about this in the class. There are some countries that have had some level of success and I think it's easy, to get really overwhelmed with climate change.
Nathan Gross: You see a lot of young people, especially that, when we talk about climate change they go to the despair side of things where they're just like, the previous [00:22:00] generation didn't do enough. And so now, the world is, ending and so we don't care.
Nathan Gross: I've heard that exact opinion from other people in the field especially people entering from public health. it's a true level of despair that people can have when it comes to climate change. it's almost like paralysis, there are examples of success, and I think it's easy to get overwhelmed, but keeping these models of success in mind, I think it's helpful. some of the areas we talked about, like, South Africa has done a fairly decent job of getting their program up, and they've been working on that program since 2002, the US has started working more aggressively.
Nathan Gross: depending on the, you know, difference. Goals of the incoming administration that could change, or that could, you know, deviate from what's currently at. But there's, you know, for instance, the CDC has a climate health sector it's a relatively small team, but they, have some funding and something called the brace grant, which is used To award [00:23:00] so much money for different climate resilience projects in different areas.
Nathan Gross: And so those, those projects are helpful and they can be used in more of a holistic way, which is some of the ways I mentioned because , they kind of have a prior definition of how that work. You know, , even some of the countries that were impacted by the heat wave in Europe, did better than others.
Nathan Gross: in fact, if you attend the class, you'll know who did the best or who came out and a less Less negative light, let's put it that way, because there's certainly a lot of challenges we talk about a comparison between the countries and yeah, there's definitely some lessons learned that you can take from the class about that.
Nathan Gross: But yeah, there's definitely some level of success. It is, it is still early in how we will see , what level of success we have, and some of it's hard to quantify at times. But now I think is actually the time for people to take action. We're past a lot of the mitigation steps.
Nathan Gross: Stages from climate change. And [00:24:00] so we're at that point where we need to do a lot of adaptation in your area, it could become too late to start planning for that. So it's important that we, take action use some of the strategies that we talk about in this class
Kyle King: thanks for that. And that's one of the reasons why we went to sort of have you on, but then also develop a course is because I think a lot of the things that we focused on the past or sort of what we already know, we need to look at what's coming up next in order so that we can actually really be prepared, you know, beyond just preparedness and exercises and things like that.
Kyle King: So there's really tough policy decisions coming, and I think that, especially in terms of complex crisis and prioritization of efforts and and all sorts of things. So And climate is just one of them that you said already. It's going to exacerbate everything else. So that that's going to be a tough sort of policy future ahead for all of us.
Kyle King: So sort of final question we have is what advice would you give? People who are, say, working in public health or public health authorities and policymakers who are looking to actually strengthen their [00:25:00] systems and, their community's resilience to climate change. you mentioned it's really in its nascent stages.
Kyle King: it's already started, but it's slowly gaining momentum and building. And there's different government organizations being formed to sort of look at this, but what would you say, What are some things that people should start doing?
Nathan Gross: Yeah, no matter where you're at, it's important to start looking at developing as much community resilience as possible and don't fall into the trap of thinking you can't be affected. I grew up in the Appalachian area in northeast Tennessee, and I can tell you, you can absolutely get hit by a hurricane my back home is still very much
Nathan Gross: In the recovery process. So, don't fall into the trap of thinking that you're out of the woods either. the main thing is, just try your best to ensure that there's community resilience, within your community make sure that you factor in, Unusual weather events.
Nathan Gross: For sure. Like that is something that I would put any emergency managers back pocket. We talk a lot about you know, [00:26:00] when we when I think of Thira in the emergency management sector. We don't include climate modeling We don't include any sort of is this disaster something that could happen in the future?
Nathan Gross: We use a lot of historical data. And you know, it has this, how many times has happened in the past? And sometimes we just get hit the hardest by things that's never hit our area. And as a result that hurts way harder than something that's hit us before because we're not used to it.
Nathan Gross: expect the unexpected and be ready. emergency management across the globe at this point. The all hazards approach is what we're supposed to be operating under, but I think a lot of emergency management, a lot of public health doesn't operate under an all hazards approach.
Nathan Gross: They go well, this is probably what's going to affect our area. start operating under the all hazards approach. Assume anything can hit you. And I think that's going to be a very positive way to do that. The other piece, which is really address social determinants of health.
Nathan Gross: Look at those as a key indicator of things to really look at. You know, look at climate change as an [00:27:00] opportunity when you talk to public officials, when you talk to individuals it's an opportunity to change your community and pull your community together. It's opportunity for jobs and the right environment with the right, funders with the right.
Nathan Gross: Private donors, or whatever group you want to pull in. But we just don't want to leave it completely. point of it is we don't want to look at it as just a burden because when we look at it as just a burden, it's really hard to appeal to people to help
Nathan Gross: Okay. you just want to mess with the system that we already have. Not saying let's create it. let's continue to build this system and make it better. So those are probably the three pieces I would really harp on I know they're rather broad and they're not going to give you specific strategies.
Nathan Gross: You want to come to the class. We dealt with a little bit more into that. We'll talk a little bit more about some of the monitoring evaluation pieces. We'll talk about specific frameworks you can use and that can just augment what I've already said. hopefully we'll see you in class.
Kyle King: All right, Nathan, thanks a lot. Thanks for your time today. I really [00:28:00] appreciate you being here on the podcast. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that? Should they just reach out to you on LinkedIn?
Nathan Gross: Yep. LinkedIn will be great.
Kyle King: All right. We'll leave a link in the show notes.
Kyle King: All right, everybody. Thanks for your time today. Bye. And then we'll see you on the next one. Thanks. Thank you
Kyle King: And to our listeners, thank you again for tuning in the crisis lab podcast. We hope that today's episode has provided you with the insights and perspectives you need to better navigate the challenges of your field. Remember that each episode is a step towards mastering the complexities of crisis management.
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