The health effects of climate change: Know the risks and become part of the solutions

Exploring the Interplay Between Climate Change, 24-Hour Movement Behavior, and Health: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND

Given the emergence of climate change and health risks, this review examined potential relationships between varying indicators of climate change, movement behaviors (ie, physical activity [PA], sedentary behavior, and sleep), and health.

METHODS

Seven databases were searched in March 2020, April 2023, and April 2024. To be included, studies must have examined indicators of climate change and at least one of the movement behaviors as either an exposure or a third variable (ie, mediator/moderator), and a measure of health as outcome. Evidence was summarized by the role (mediator/moderator) that either climate change or movement behavior(s) has with health measures. Relationships and directionality of each association, as well as the strength and certainty of evidence were synthesized.

RESULTS

A total of 79 studies were eligible, representing 6,671,791 participants and 3137 counties from 25 countries (40% low- and middle-income countries). Of 98 observations from 17 studies that examined PA as a mediator, 34.7% indicated that PA mediated the relationship between climate change and health measure such that indicators of adverse climate change were associated with lower PA, and worse health outcome. Of 274 observations made from 46 studies, 28% showed that PA favorably modified the negative association between climate change and health outcome. Evidence was largely lacking and inconclusive for sedentary behavior and sleep, as well as climate change indicators as an intermediatory variable.

CONCLUSIONS

PA may mitigate the adverse impact of climate change on health. Further evidence is needed to integrate PA into climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategies.

On the possibility of decolonising planetary health: exploring new geographies for collaboration

Decolonial planetary health aspires to centre the diversity and importance of Indigenous thought and stewardship. In this Viewpoint, we explore research in planetary health across holistic worldviews and western scientific approaches. We base our examination of decolonising interventions in planetary health by exploring how global trajectories play out in British Columbia, Canada. A central part of this analysis is highlighting intercultural thinking to promote an anti-colonial, anti-racist, and reciprocal approach to climate change and global health inequities across geographical space and within planetary health discourse. Our perspective encompasses an asset-based examination, which focuses on the Indigenous scholarship in planetary health that is already underway and considers how rigorous engagement with epistemic and geographical diversity can strengthen and advance planetary health. This is a place-based response to planetary health, as British Columbia experiences climate catastrophes that are impacting whole communities, cutting through major transportation systems, disrupting supply chains, and creating a further burden on public health agencies and authorities that are spread thin by COVID-19 response. We argue for a progressive acknowledgment of decolonising work that is pushing research and practice in planetary health forward.

Perceptions of the health impacts of climate change among Canadians

BACKGROUND

Understanding public perceptions of the health risks of climate change is critical to inform risk communication and support the adoption of adaptive behaviours. In Canada, very few studies have explored public understandings and perceptions of climate impacts on health. The objective of this study was to address this gap by exploring perceptions of the link between climate change and health.

METHODS

We conducted a survey of Canadians (n = 3,014) to address this objective. The 116-question survey measured prior consideration of the link between climate change and health, affective assessment of climate health impacts, unprompted knowledge of climate health impacts, and concern about a range of impacts. ANOVA tests were used to assess differences among sociodemographic groups.

RESULTS

Overall, Canadian's have a similar level of concern about health impacts of climate change compared with concern about other impacts (e.g. biophysical, economic, and national security). Among health-related impacts, respondents were more concerned about impacts on water, food and air quality, compared with impacts on mental health, infectious diseases and heat-related illnesses. There were differences among sociodemographic groups; women were significantly more concerned than men about all of the health-related impacts; respondents with a high school level of education were significantly less concerned about all health-related impacts compared with respondents with more education; and respondents on the political left were more concerned with those in the political centre, who were more concerned than those on the political right.

CONCLUSION

There is emerging literature suggesting that framing communication around climate change in terms of the health risks it poses may increase perceptions of the proximity of the risks. These results suggest that it is important to be specific in the types of health risks that are communicated, and to consider the concerns of the target sociodemographic groups. The differential knowledge, awareness, and concern of climate health impacts across segments of the Canadian population can inform targeted communication and engagement to build broader support for adaptation and mitigation measures.

"Land is everything, land is us": Exploring the connections between climate change, land, and health in Fort William First Nation

The myriad and cumulative impacts of climate change on land, communities, and health are increasingly evident worldwide. Throughout 2019 and 2020, Fort William First Nation and researchers at Lakehead University conducted a project to document and understand connections among climate change, land, and health from the perspective of Elders, knowledge keepers, and community members with close ties to the land. Fort William First Nation is an Anishinaabe community located on the shores of Lake Superior/Kitchigami in Northern Ontario and within Robinson-Superior Treaty territory. This paper describes the analysis of interviews with 22 community members. Two-Eyed Seeing, an approach that centers the working together of Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges and peoples and demands respectful relationship building, guided our project and analysis. Our analysis identified five themes: 1) observations and experiences of changes on the land, 2) lack of care and respect for Mother Earth as the root cause of climate change, 3) healthy land, healthy people, 4) youth and future generations, and 5) (re-)connecting with land and culture. 'All our Relations' is a thread woven across these themes emphasizing that climate change is understood and experienced through relationships and relationality. As concluding thoughts and reflections, we share three specific offerings of particular relevance to those engaging in climate change and health research and action with Indigenous peoples and communities. First, this research has highlighted the importance of explicitly centering land when exploring the links between climate change and health. Second, we reflect on the value of both the Two-Eyed Seeing approach and the Medicine Wheel in guiding climate change and health research. Third, we argue for an explicit focus on relationships and relationality in efforts aimed at understanding and addressing climate change.

Insects and their pathogens in a changing climate

The complex nature of climate change-mediated multitrophic interaction is an underexplored area, but has the potential to dramatically shift transmission and distribution of many insects and their pathogens, placing some populations closer to the brink of extinction. However, for individual insect-pathogen interactions climate change will have complicated hard-to-anticipate impacts. Thus, both pathogen virulence and insect host immunity are intrinsically linked with generalized stress responses, and in both pathogen and host have extensive trade-offs with nutrition (e.g., host plant quality), growth and reproduction. Potentially alleviating or exasperating these impacts, some pathogens and hosts respond genetically and rapidly to environmental shifts. This review identifies many areas for future research including a particular need to identify how altered global warming interacts with other environmental changes and stressors, and how consistent these impacts are across pathogens and hosts. With that achieved we would be closer to producing an overarching framework to integrate knowledge on all environmental interplay and infectious disease events.

Systematic Organization of COVID-19 Data Supported by the Adverse Outcome Pathway Framework

Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOP) provide structured frameworks for the systematic organization of research data and knowledge. The AOP framework follows a set of key principles that allow for broad application across diverse disciplines related to human health, including toxicology, pharmacology, virology and medical research. The COVID-19 pandemic engages a great number of scientists world-wide and data is increasing with exponential speed. Diligent data management strategies are employed but approaches for systematically organizing the data-derived information and knowledge are lacking. We believe AOPs can play an important role in improving interpretation and efficient application of scientific understanding of COVID-19. Here, we outline a newly initiated effort, the CIAO project (https://www.ciao-covid.net/), to streamline collaboration between scientists across the world toward development of AOPs for COVID-19, and describe the overarching aims of the effort, as well as the expected outcomes and research support that they will provide.

Positive Externalities of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation for Human Health: A Review and Conceptual Framework for Public Health Research

Anthropogenic climate change is adversely impacting people and contributing to suffering and increased costs from climate-related diseases and injuries. In responding to this urgent and growing public health crisis, mitigation strategies are in place to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) while adaptation strategies exist to reduce and/or alleviate the adverse effects of climate change by increasing systems' resilience to future impacts. While these strategies have numerous positive benefits on climate change itself, they also often have other positive externalities or health co-benefits. This knowledge can be harnessed to promote and improve global public health, particularly for the most vulnerable populations. Previous conceptual models in mitigation and adaptation studies such as the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) considered health in the thinking, but health outcomes were not their primary intention. Additionally, existing guidance documents such as the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidance for Climate Resilient and Environmentally Sustainable Health Care Facilities is designed primarily for public health professionals or healthcare managers in hospital settings with a primary focus on resilience. However, a detailed cross sectoral and multidisciplinary conceptual framework, which links mitigation and adaptation strategies with health outcomes as a primary end point, has not yet been developed to guide research in this area. In this paper, we briefly summarize the burden of climate change on global public health, describe important mitigation and adaptation strategies, and present key health benefits by giving context specific examples from high, middle, and low-income settings. We then provide a conceptual framework to inform future global public health research and preparedness across sectors and disciplines and outline key stakeholders recommendations in promoting climate resilient systems and advancing health equity.

Big Data Analytics in the Fight against Major Public Health Incidents (Including COVID-19): A Conceptual Framework

Major public health incidents such as COVID-19 typically have characteristics of being sudden, uncertain, and hazardous. If a government can effectively accumulate big data from various sources and use appropriate analytical methods, it may quickly respond to achieve optimal public health decisions, thereby ameliorating negative impacts from a public health incident and more quickly restoring normality. Although there are many reports and studies examining how to use big data for epidemic prevention, there is still a lack of an effective review and framework of the application of big data in the fight against major public health incidents such as COVID-19, which would be a helpful reference for governments. This paper provides clear information on the characteristics of COVID-19, as well as key big data resources, big data for the visualization of pandemic prevention and control, close contact screening, online public opinion monitoring, virus host analysis, and pandemic forecast evaluation. A framework is provided as a multidimensional reference for the effective use of big data analytics technology to prevent and control epidemics (or pandemics). The challenges and suggestions with respect to applying big data for fighting COVID-19 are also discussed.

Environmental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic - a lesson for the future

The environment is an integral component of human and animal health. COVID-19 is a global health challenge in the twenty-first century. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and its spread to regional countries and nowadays affecting more than 210 countries worldwide represents the first pandemic in history to be caused by a coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic has huge impacts on most aspects of human activities, as well as on the economy and health care systems. Lock-downs, quarantines and border closures in the wake of the pandemic have led to reductions in air pollution through decreased travel and production. These positive environmental effects are likely mostly temporary, but may serve as an example that changes in our way of life can have prompt positive effects for the environment and demonstrate the usefulness of travel-reducing measures such as teleconferencing. Thus, acknowledging that COVID-19 is first and foremost a global disaster, the pandemic may inspire to future behavioral changes with positive environmental effects.

Disruptive Technologies for Environment and Health Research: An Overview of Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Internet of Things

The purpose of this descriptive research paper is to initiate discussions on the use of innovative technologies and their potential to support the research and development of pan-Canadian monitoring and surveillance activities associated with environmental impacts on health and within the health system. Its primary aim is to provide a review of disruptive technologies and their current uses in the environment and in healthcare. Drawing on extensive experience in population-level surveillance through the use of technology, knowledge from prior projects in the field, and conducting a review of the technologies, this paper is meant to serve as the initial steps toward a better understanding of the research area. In doing so, we hope to be able to better assess which technologies might best be leveraged to advance this unique intersection of health and environment. This paper first outlines the current use of technologies at the intersection of public health and the environment, in particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT). The paper provides a description for each of these technologies, along with a summary of their current applications, and a description of the challenges one might face with adopting them. Thereafter, a high-level reference architecture, that addresses the challenges of the described technologies and could potentially be incorporated into the pan-Canadian surveillance system, is conceived and presented.