TPS 662: Climate change effects on labour, migration and infections, Exhibition Hall, Ground floor, August 28, 2019, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Background: A growing body of literature documents the health impacts of weather-related disasters and a projected acceleration of global warming is expected to increase the frequency and severity of these events. Government agencies have called for enhancing citizens’ resilience as a way to prepare populations in advance of disasters. However, there is little empirical evidence to link measures of resilience to disaster-related health outcomes, hindering full consideration of health from the evaluation of resilience strategies and policies. In late October 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the northeastern United States coastline with devastating impacts. Within this context, we examine whether the spatial patterning of morbidity due to the storm can be explained by community-level resilience characteristics. Methods: Emergency department (ED) visit data for 16 New Jersey counties, which were highly impacted by Sandy, was obtained from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. A two-stage Bayesian hierarchical model was used to estimate each county’s increase in risk of ED visits for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and myocardial infarction (MI) due to Hurricane Sandy. We examined variation in county-level associations according to the county’s resilience, defined by the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) index. Results: In the month following the storm, across highly impacted counties, there was a 10.5% (95% PI: 7.2, 14.0) increase in COPD ED visits and a 12.3% (95% PI: 6.7, 18.2) increase in MI ED visits. The effect of the storm on COPD visits decreased by 2.6% for a z-score increase in the BRIC index [-2.58%, 95% PI: (-5.3, 0.2)]. County level variation in resilience did not explain variation in MI ED visits. Conclusions: Community-level resilience measures may explain some variation in health impacts due to weather-related disasters. Future work will investigate the domains of resilience that contribute to this effect, as well as possible interventions to increase such resilience.