Climate-smart public health for global health resilience.

Climate change poses urgent public health risks from rising global temperatures and extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts, and floods, which disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. To address the current silos embedded in climate, environmental, and public health monitoring and surveillance systems, climate-smart public health (CSPH) creates an integrated platform for action across these sectors, enabling more rapid and efficient responses to climate-related public health challenges. In this Personal View, we introduce the concept of CSPH, a data-driven framework designed to monitor, assess, and adapt to climate-related health impacts.

How is maternal, newborn, and child health addressed in Heat Health Action Plans? A scoping review and content analysis.

Background: Newborns, children, and pregnant and postpartum populations are among the most at risk from exposure to extreme heat. Heat Health Action Plans (HHAPs) are promoted by the World Health Organization to manage public health risks of heat. Still, limited research exists on how well current HHAPs address the needs of women and children in the context of increasingly frequent heat events.

The 2023 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: the imperative for a health-centred response in a world facing irreversible harms.

Unlabelled: The Countdown is an international research collaboration that independently monitors the evolving impacts of climate change on health, and the emerging health opportunities of climate action. In its eighth iteration, this 2023 report draws on the expertise of 114 scientists and health practitioners from 52 research institutions and UN agencies worldwide to provide its most comprehensive assessment yet. In 2022, the Countdown warned that people’s health is at the mercy of fossil fuels and stressed the transformative opportunity of jointly tackling the concurrent climate change, energy, cost-of-living, and health crises for human health and wellbeing.

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels.

Unlabelled: The 2022 report of the Countdown is published as the world confronts profound and concurrent systemic shocks. Countries and health systems continue to contend with the health, social, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a persistent fossil fuel overdependence has pushed the world into global energy and cost-of-living crises. As these crises unfold, climate change escalates unabated.

Climate services for health: From global observations to local interventions.

Despite the wealth of available climate data available, there is no consensus on the most appropriate product choice for health impact modelling and how this influences downstream climate-health decisions. We discuss challenges related to product choice, highlighting the importance of considering data biases and co-development of climate services between different sectors.

The 2021 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: code red for a healthy future.

Unlabelled: The Countdown is an international collaboration that independently monitors the health consequences of a changing climate. Publishing updated, new, and improved indicators each year, the Countdown represents the consensus of leading researchers from 43 academic institutions and UN agencies. The 44 indicators of this report expose an unabated rise in the health impacts of climate change and the current health consequences of the delayed and inconsistent response of countries around the globe—providing a clear imperative for accelerated action that puts the health of people and planet above all else.

COVID-19 and thermoregulation-related problems: Practical recommendations.

The COVID-19 pandemic started in the cold months of the year 2020 in the Northern hemisphere. Concerns were raised that the hot season may lead to additional problems as some typical interventions to prevent heat-related illness could potentially conflict with precautions to reduce coronavirus transmission. Therefore, an international research team organized by the Global Health Heat Information Network generated an inventory of the specific concerns about this nexus and began to address the issues.

The 2020 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: responding to converging crises.

For the Chinese, French, German, and Spanish translations of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.

A framework for research linking weather, climate and COVID-19.

Early studies of weather, seasonality, and environmental influences on COVID-19 have yielded inconsistent and confusing results. To provide policy-makers and the public with meaningful and actionable environmentally-informed COVID-19 risk estimates, the research community must meet robust methodological and communication standards.

The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate.

Unlabelled: The Countdown is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration, dedicated to monitoring the evolving health profile of climate change, and providing an independent assessment of the delivery of commitments made by governments worldwide under the Paris Agreement. The 2019 report presents an annual update of 41 indicators across five key domains: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement. The report represents the findings and consensus of 35 leading academic institutions and UN agencies from every continent.

The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come.

Unlabelled: The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change was established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the health dimensions of the impacts of, and the response to, climate change. The Countdown tracks 41 indicators across five domains: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; finance and economics; and public and political engagement. This report is the product of a collaboration of 27 leading academic institutions, the UN, and intergovernmental agencies from every continent.

Assessment of Risk, Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change by the Health Sector in Madagascar.

Madagascar is cited as one of the most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, with significant impacts to the health of its population. In this study, the vulnerability of Madagascar's health sector to climate change was assessed and appropriate adaptation measures were identified. In order to assess climate risks, vulnerability and identify adaptation options, the Madagascar Ministry of Public Health as well as the National Meteorological and Hydrological Service worked in close collaboration with a team of local experts to conduct a literature review, field surveys, and analyses of current and future climate and health trends.

Assessing Health Vulnerabilities and Adaptation to Climate Change: A Review of International Progress.

Climate change is increasing risks to human health and to the health systems that seek to protect the safety and well-being of populations. Health authorities require information about current associations between health outcomes and weather or climate, vulnerable populations, projections of future risks and adaptation opportunities in order to reduce exposures, empower individuals to take needed protective actions and build climate-resilient health systems. An increasing number of health authorities from local to national levels seek this information by conducting climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments.

Climate drivers of vector-borne diseases in Africa and their relevance to control programmes.

Background: Climate-based disease forecasting has been proposed as a potential tool in climate change adaptation for the health sector. Here we explore the relevance of climate data, drivers and predictions for vector-borne disease control efforts in Africa.

Methods: Using data from a number of sources we explore rainfall and temperature across the African continent, from seasonality to variability at annual, multi-decadal and timescales consistent with climate change.

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change.

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change is an international, multidisciplinary research collaboration between academic institutions and practitioners across the world. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission, which concluded that the response to climate change could be "the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century". The Lancet Countdown aims to track the health impacts of climate hazards; health resilience and adaptation; health co-benefits of climate change mitigation; economics and finance; and political and broader engagement.