Tracking the impacts of climate change on human health via indicators: lessons from the Lancet Countdown

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Claudia Di Napoli, University of Reading; Alice McGushin, University College London; Marina Romanello, University College London; Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, University College London; Wenjia Cai, Tsinghua University; Jonathan Chambers, University of Geneva; Shouro Dasgupta, London Sch Econ & Polit Sci LSE; Luis E Escobar, Virginia Tech; Ilan Kelman, University College London; Tord Kjellstrom, Health and Environment International Trust; Dominic Kniveton, University of Sussex; Yang Liu, Emory University; Zhou Liu, Emory University; Rachel Lowe, Barcelona Supercomputing Center; Jaime Martinez-Urtaza, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Barcelona; Celia McMichael, University of Melbourne; Maziar Moradi-Lakeh, Iran University of Medical Sciences; Kris A Murray, Imperial College London; Mahnaz Rabbaniha, Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Organisation; Jan C Semenza, University of Heidelberg; Liuhua Shi, Emory University; Meisam Tabatabaei, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu; Joaquin A Trinanes, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela; Bryan N Vu, Emory University; Chloe Brimicombe, University of Reading; Elizabeth J Robinson, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
• Language: English
• Date: 2022-04-06
• Publisher: BMC
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © The Author(s) 2022
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13055-6
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: BMC PUBLIC HEALTH
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 1
• Start Page: 663
• End Page: 663
• Grant/Funding Information: This work is supported by an unrestricted grant from the Wellcome Trust (209734/Z/17/Z).
• Keywords: Climate change; Science & Technology; Public, Environmental & Occupational Health; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; Policy making; Indicators; HEAT; Climate data; HOTSPOTS; Public health
• Research Categories: Agriculture, Forestry and Wildlife; Agriculture, Fisheries and Aquaculture; Environmental Sciences; Health Sciences, Public Health; Geography

Abstract

Background: In the past decades, climate change has been impacting human lives and health via extreme weather and climate events and alterations in labour capacity, food security, and the prevalence and geographical distribution of infectious diseases across the globe. Climate change and health indicators (CCHIs) are workable tools designed to capture the complex set of interdependent interactions through which climate change is affecting human health. Since 2015, a novel sub-set of CCHIs, focusing on climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability indicators (CCIEVIs) has been developed, refined, and integrated by Working Group 1 of the “Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change”, an international collaboration across disciplines that include climate, geography, epidemiology, occupation health, and economics. Discussion: This research in practice article is a reflective narrative documenting how we have developed CCIEVIs as a discrete set of quantifiable indicators that are updated annually to provide the most recent picture of climate change’s impacts on human health. In our experience, the main challenge was to define globally relevant indicators that also have local relevance and as such can support decision making across multiple spatial scales. We found a hazard, exposure, and vulnerability framework to be effective in this regard. We here describe how we used such a framework to define CCIEVIs based on both data availability and the indicators’ relevance to climate change and human health. We also report on how CCIEVIs have been improved and added to, detailing the underlying data and methods, and in doing so provide the defining quality criteria for Lancet Countdown CCIEVIs. Conclusions: Our experience shows that CCIEVIs can effectively contribute to a world-wide monitoring system that aims to track, communicate, and harness evidence on climate-induced health impacts towards effective intervention strategies. An ongoing challenge is how to improve CCIEVIs so that the description of the linkages between climate change and human health can become more and more comprehensive.