Transitioning from climate ambitions to climate actions through public health policy initiatives.

Policies to implement climate-forcing pollution emission reductions have often been stymied by economic and political divisiveness. However, certain uncontested nonregret public health policies that also carry climate-forcing cobenefits with them could provide more achievable policy pathways to accelerate the implementation of climate mitigation. An International Society for Environmental Epidemiology Policy Committee endorsed pre-28th Conference of the Parties climate meeting workshop brought together experts on environment, diet, civic planning, and health to review current understanding of public health policy approaches that provide climate change mitigation cobenefits by also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Critical Steps To Address Climate, Health, And Equity.

Climate change poses an unprecedented threat to human health and well-being in the United States. In this article, part of the National Academy of Medicine's Vital Directions for Health and Health Care: Priorities for 2025 initiative, we outline key strategies to address climate change, health, and equity, using a public health approach. We focus on three critical areas: transitioning to clean energy sources, upgrading health infrastructure, and scaling public health and health care resilience.

Responding to heat-related health risks: the urgency of an equipoise between emergency and equity.

In the summer of 2024, there were higher temperatures than usual in several parts of India. Temperatures in Delhi, a huge city with millions of residents, broke several previous records. Low-income households have dwellings that do not offer much protection from the heat, and individuals struggle to access basic amenities, such as water.

The effect of prescription and over-the-counter medications on core temperature in adults during heat stress: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Heat stress impacts are an escalating global health concern. Public health bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) warn that certain medications impair thermoregulation, with limited supporting evidence. Our aim was to investigate whether medications listed by the WHO increase core temperature responses during heat stress.

Long-Term Effect of Temperature Increase on Liver Cancer in Australia: A Bayesian Spatial Analysis.

Background: While some evidence has potentially linked climate change to carcinogenic factors, the long-term effect of climate change on liver cancer risk largely remains unclear.

Objectives: Our objective is to evaluate the long-term relationship between temperature increase and liver cancer incidence in Australia.

Methods: We mapped the spatial distribution of liver cancer incidence from 2001 to 2019 in Australia.

Multimorbidity and emergency hospitalisations during hot weather.

Background: People with chronic diseases are a commonly listed heat-vulnerable group in heat-health action plans. While prior research identifies multiple health conditions that may increase vulnerability to ambient heat, there is minimal evidence regarding the implications of multimorbidity (two or more chronic diseases).

Methods: From the statewide hospital registry of Queensland, Australia, we identified people aged ≥15 years who had emergency hospitalisation(s) between March 2004 and April 2016 and previously had 0, 1, 2, or ≥3 of five chronic diseases: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, mental disorders, asthma/COPD, and chronic kidney disease.

Risk factors associated with heatwave mortality in Chinese adults over 65 years.

Aging populations are susceptible to heat-related mortality because of physiological factors and comorbidities. However, the understanding of individual vulnerabilities in the aging population is incomplete. In the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, we assessed daily heatwave exposure individually for 13,527 participants (median age = 89 years) and 3,249 summer mortalities during follow-up from 2008 to 2018.

Global reductions in manual agricultural work capacity due to climate change.

Manual outdoor work is essential in many agricultural systems. Climate change will make such work more stressful in many regions due to heat exposure. The physical work capacity metric (PWC) is a physiologically based approach that estimates an individual's work capacity relative to an environment without any heat stress.

Protocol of an individual participant data meta-analysis to quantify the impact of high ambient temperatures on maternal and child health in Africa (HEAT IPD).

Introduction: Globally, recognition is growing of the harmful impacts of high ambient temperatures (heat) on health in pregnant women and children. There remain, however, major evidence gaps on the extent to which heat increases the risks for adverse health outcomes, and how this varies between settings. Evidence gaps are especially large in Africa.

Commonly used indices disagree about the effect of moisture on heat stress.

Irrigation and urban greening can mitigate extreme temperatures and reduce adverse health impacts from heat. However, some recent studies suggest these interventions could actually exacerbate heat stress by increasing humidity. These studies use different heat stress indices (HSIs), hindering intercomparisons of the relative roles of temperature and humidity.

A physiological approach for assessing human survivability and liveability to heat in a changing climate.

Most studies projecting human survivability limits to extreme heat with climate change use a 35 °C wet-bulb temperature (T) threshold without integrating variations in human physiology. This study applies physiological and biophysical principles for young and older adults, in sun or shade, to improve current estimates of survivability and introduce liveability (maximum safe, sustained activity) under current and future climates. Our physiology-based survival limits show a vast underestimation of risks by the 35 °C T model in hot-dry conditions.