Environment & Climate
Health
event
Climate Action to Protect and Promote Health: Building and Sharing the Evidence
MAPBOX
Scientific Session at the 2022 AAAS Annual Meeting
Climate has a range of effects on health but effective adaptation and mitigation strategies can reduce impacts and improve health. The InterAcademy Partnership (more than 140 academies of science, engineering, and medicine) and the U.S. National Academy of Medicine share findings from new academy projects in the Americas and Africa to link global research and public policy development, covering both direct and indirect adverse climate effects on health. The design of the studies is novel, taking transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral perspectives, ensuring inclusivity of issues for lower income countries, Indigenous People, and other vulnerable groups in support of a systems-based approach to tackle priorities for developing resilient and equitable health systems under climate change. These priorities include impacts of heat, flooding, extreme weather events, air pollution, food insecurity, infectious diseases, and migration. It focuses on examples of good practice in devising integrated adaptation and mitigation solutions and shows how available evidence can inform policy, and identify knowledge gaps to fill. The concurrent health crises of COVID-19 and climate change are unprecedented threats but there are also unprecedented scientific opportunities to drive innovation, integrate evidence-based policy at national, regional, and global levels, and empower individuals and communities to effect transformative change in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
