ABSTRACT
The chapters in this volume share a commitlnent to expanding the dialogue between the public health community and the climate change community over issues, anticipating that more extensive exchanges will prove beneficial to the interests and missions of both. Dialogue between professional research communities seldom comes easily, however, even under United Nations (UN) and with research questions of global import. These two particuiar communities have different institu tional histories and modes of discourse and spring from very different research tradi tions. And while they can be thought of metaphorically as communities, both are subject to internal divisions and ambiguous or boundaries . To be more pre cise, it i s not public health per se that i s involved in adaptation work, but only a small segnlcnt of those doing population-based prevention research . Likewise, adaptation occupies relatively small group of researchers among those addressing climate impacts, and not all of them identify equally with the climate change community. In effect, what we have are not communities much as neighborhoods. An dialogue in this instance will not only take work, it will depend on the in i tiative of informal networks of " neighborhood" special ists rather formal a rrangements between professional communities . Sl-i l l , there are reasons to be optimistic.
