Which health areas are impacted by climate change and where is more guidance needed?

Climate change significantly impacts human health, which is increasingly evident through the escalation of heatwaves, heightened air pollution, and the proliferation of infectious diseases. Failure to act will worsen these issues, posing graver risks to both current and future generations' well-being. Over the next decade, environmental risks are set to dominate global challenges, all being directly related to, or consequences of, climate change.

Despite their significant health impact, there are many areas which lack guidance or policies which address these issues. As part of the Climate and Health initiative at the World Economic Forum, and in collaboration with L.E.K. Consulting, work was undertaken to support the definition of guidance to tackle the impact of climate change on health by cataloguing research efforts towards health areas in preparation for multi-industry stakeholder collaboration.

Through a comprehensive literature review, health areas have been identified where climate change is most likely to harm human health with severe consequences. Documents reviewed are published by key organizations, such as the World Health Organization, World Meteorological Organization, World Bank, United Nations, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), and the Planetary Health Alliance.

Evidence was collected for the high-impact areas using databases such as PubMed, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and publications posted on the websites of over 60 leading organizations focused on climate and health. About 13,000 documents were identified by the search.

The research was framed around four climate change themes outlined in Figure 1 (below).

The evidence was categorised by region outlined in Figure 2 (below). Overall, research distribution is consistent across geographies but the number of mentions is higher than average for the topic of food and water in Africa, for vector ecology in South America and for extreme weather in Asia and Oceania. These findings indicate relevance and importance of specific climate change challenges faced by each region and inform targeted guidance development and action.

All evidence was categorised as “actionable” versus “non-actionable”; whereby actionable evidence provides guidance on how to address the impact of climate change on health. Of the 13,000 relevant documents, about 40% provided guidance to either the private or public sectors.

The research identified five “unmet need” areas which lack adequate guidance and require further attention, and five “hot topics” areas where existing efforts should continue, given the high impact of climate change on these areas. Ten health areas with different levels of guidance are outlined in Figure 3 (below).

Areas that particularly stand out include the lack of guidance on reducing the impact of extreme weather events, food and water quality and availability, and vector-borne disease surges on healthcare infrastructure and services, as well as the continuing efforts towards alleviating the impact of climate change on mental health and social inequality.

While the healthcare sector has a particularly critical role in addressing these areas, other sectors also play an important part in supporting change. For businesses, climate change has implications on supply chains and productivity and can also impact workforce health, operations, and finances. To improve outcomes both for businesses and for population health, effective and actionable interventions for all industry types as well as multi-stakeholder collaboration are critical. The Forum aims to drive engagement from all sectors to ensure climate-resilient health systems.

This work is the first step of an ongoing project, which aims to increase awareness of the impact of climate change on health and build collaboration in developing and adopting guidance for action. The findings will be leveraged to narrow down efforts towards the most important areas identified, for targeted guidance development and action.

Going forward, the work will bring together perspectives from industry, the public sector, international non-profit organizations, and academia through working groups which will be announced at the Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos this January.

The working groups will support evidence gathering to aggregate current data on health and climate across sectors, they will support the generation of insights to guide and mobilise action to protect human health, and they will contribute to the development of tools and resources for improved and evidence-based decision-making to protect population health.