Short-term association between hot nights and mortality: a multicountry analysis in 178 locations considering hourly ambient temperature.

Background: The rise in hot nights over recent decades and projections of further increases due to climate change underscores the critical need to understand their impact. This knowledge is essential for shaping public health strategies and guiding adaptation efforts. Despite their significance, research on the implications of hot nights remains limited.

[Impact of heat on health: intervention scenarios to reduce heat in urban areas and health co-benefits in 6 Italian cities involved in the Climactions project].

Objectives: to quantify the impact of heat on mortality, in terms of heat attributable deaths in 6 Italian cities included in the CCM Climactions project (Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Rome, Bari, Palermo) and to estimate the potential health co-benefits by considering temperature reduction scenarios in urban areas proposed in the project case studies in terms of urban nature-based solutions measures and albedo variation of impervious surfaces.

Design: city-specific time series models and impact assessment.

Setting And Participants: daily mortality counts and average temperature data in six Italian cities (Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Rome, Bari, Palermo) included in the CCM CLIMACTIONS project Main outcome measures: overall mortality.

[Climactions project. Environmental, socioeconomic, and territorial vulnerability in 5 Italian cities].

Objectives: to identify environmental, socioeconomic, and territorial characteristics in five urban areas (Turin, Bologna, Rome, Bari, Palermo) and to identify areas characterized by high environmental and socioeconomic vulnerability.

Design: geographical study.

Setting And Participants: study domain on five Italian cities, each city was characterized at the urban-area level.

[Smart working and active mobility for reducing CO2 emissions from the home-to-work commute: the results of the Climactions project].

Objectives: to estimate CO2 emissions for different commuting modes before, during, and after the COVID-19 lockdown, and define scenarios to assess their impact on the environment and health.

Design: cross-sectional study using data retrieved from a survey.

Setting And Participants: the study included anonymous participation from both researchers involved in the Climactions project and the general population; the questionnaire was made available through social media.

[Climactions project: document review of policies and measures of climate change adaptation and mitigation in urban areas].

Background: public health aims to promote a health-centred approach in all policies, even in adaptation and mitigation policies for climate change.

Objectives: to provide a critical summary on legislations, policies and case studies at international, national and local level and to assess the implementation of the "health lens", in support of researchers and workers on environment and health.

Design: document review on legislations, policies and case studies, focusing on mitigation of urban health island and sustainable mobility.

Promoting health through climate change mitigation in Europe.

Several EU climate change mitigation policies have the potential to deliver health co-benefits. However, existing frameworks guiding research in this area lack important details that are needed to understand how evidence of health co-benefits can be used to support the ambition and acceptability of EU climate policy. In this Personal View, we propose an integrated framework for advancing the state-of-the-science on health co-benefits of climate change mitigation and realising the societal effect of evidence documenting co-benefits.

Estimating the urban heat-related mortality burden due to greenness: a global modelling study.

Background: Heat exposure poses a substantial public health threat. Increasing greenness has been suggested as a mitigation strategy due to its cooling effect and potential to modify the heat-mortality association. This study aimed to comprehensively estimate the effects of increased greenness on heat-related deaths.

Occupational Heat Stress Among Migrant and Ethnic Minority Outdoor Workers: A Scoping Review.

Purpose Of Review: Migrant and ethnic minority (MEM) outdoor workers might be at increased risk for heat-related illnesses (HRI), due to environmental exposures, heavy physical work, limited control over workplace conditions and language and cultural barriers. This review aims to synthesize the literature on health impacts of occupational heat exposure among MEM outdoor workers, including risk factors, heat-related perception and behaviour and healthcare utilization.

Recent Findings: Seventy-six publications were included.

Evaluating the socioeconomic benefits of heat-health warning systems.

Heat-health early warning systems (HHWS) are an important collaborative activity between the meteorological and health communities. This study aimed to map the evidence on the socioeconomic assessment of HHWS and their effectiveness in terms of averting heat related health outcomes. It also aimed to map the technical, structural, and societal barriers and facilitators to implementation and use of HHWS.

[Not Available].

In urban areas, environmental exposures to air pollution, extreme temperatures and noise as well as socio-economic inequalities are amplified. Urban green spaces offer dual benefits: they help mitigate climate change and improve public health by fostering connection to nature, reducing noise and air pollution, mitigating the urban heat island effect, and promoting physical activity. Within the 2023 "Cobenefici di Salute ed equità a supporto dei piani di risposta ai cambiamenti climatici in Italia" project funded by the Ministry of Health, we identified health indicators to assess climate action co-benefits, including those on cardiovascular disease mortality and morbidity, birth outcomes and mental health.

Independent effects of long and short-term exposures to non-optimal increased temperature on mortality.

Although the short-term heat effects are well-established, longer-term effects, beyond those, have recently received attention, in the context of climate change. Our study aims to investigate the potential effects of long-term exposure to non-optimal warm period temperatures on all-cause mortality in four large regions in the UK, Norway, Italy, and Greece. Daily all-cause mortality counts from 1996 to 2018 for four European NUTS-2 regions including 52-662 small areas were collected and associated with spatiotemporal temperature estimates.

Temporal change in minimum mortality temperature under changing climate: A multicountry multicommunity observational study spanning 1986-2015.

Background: The minimum mortality temperature (MMT) or MMT percentile (MMTP) is an indicator of population susceptibility to nonoptimum temperatures. MMT and MMTP change over time; however, the changing directions show region-wide heterogeneity. We examined the heterogeneity of temporal changes in MMT and MMTP across multiple communities and in multiple countries.

Temperature-mortality associations by age and cause: a multi-country multi-city study.

Background: Heterogeneity in temperature-mortality relationships across locations may partly result from differences in the demographic structure of populations and their cause-specific vulnerabilities. Here we conduct the largest epidemiological study to date on the association between ambient temperature and mortality by age and cause using data from 532 cities in 33 countries.

Methods: We collected daily temperature and mortality data from each country.

Effect modification of air pollution on the association between heat and mortality in five European countries.

Background: Evidence suggests that air pollution modifies the association between heat and mortality. However, most studies have been conducted in cities without rural data. This time-series study examined potential effect modification of particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O) on heat-related mortality using small-area data from five European countries, and explored the influence of area characteristics.

Heat and cause-specific cardiopulmonary mortality in Germany: a case-crossover study using small-area assessment.

Background: High temperatures have been associated with increased mortality, with evidence reported predominately in large cities and for total cardiovascular or respiratory deaths. This case-crossover study examined heat-related cause-specific cardiopulmonary mortality and vulnerability factors using small-area data from Germany.

Methods: We analyzed daily counts of cause-specific cardiopulmonary deaths from 380 German districts (2000-2016) and daily mean temperatures estimated by spatial-temporal models.

Temporal variations in the short-term effects of ambient air pollution on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality: a pooled analysis of 380 urban areas over a 22-year period.

Background: Ambient air pollution, including particulate matter (such as PM and PM) and nitrogen dioxide (NO), has been linked to increases in mortality. Whether populations' vulnerability to these pollutants has changed over time is unclear, and studies on this topic do not include multicountry analysis. We evaluated whether changes in exposure to air pollutants were associated with changes in mortality effect estimates over time.

Global, regional, and national burden of heatwave-related mortality from 1990 to 2019: A three-stage modelling study.

Background: The regional disparity of heatwave-related mortality over a long period has not been sufficiently assessed across the globe, impeding the localisation of adaptation planning and risk management towards climate change. We quantified the global mortality burden associated with heatwaves at a spatial resolution of 0.5°×0.

[Impact of heat and cold on cause -specific mortality in Italy].

Objectives: to estimate the impact of daily exposure to extreme air temperatures (heat and cold) on cause-specific mortality in Italy and to evaluate the differences in the association between urban, suburban and rural municipalities.

Design: time series analyses with two-stage approach were applied: in the first stage, multiple Poisson regression models and distributed lag non-linear models (DLNM) were used to define the association between temperature and mortality; in the second one, meta-analytic results were obtained by adopting BLUP (Best Linear Unbiased Prediction) coefficients at provincial level, which were then used to estimate the Attributable Fractions of cause-specific deaths.

Setting And Participants: cause-specific deaths from 2006to 2015 in Italy have been analysed by region and overall.