Comparative assessment of heatwave vulnerability factors for the districts of Budapest, Hungary

Social vulnerability indicators to the Health Impacts of Climate Change: A Scoping Review

“…The spatial distribution of human populations in urban, sub-urban, and rural areas increases vulnerability to the health impacts of climate change (16,48,49,59,62,67,70,90,91,94,96,98,105,109,116,118,144,149,162,168,172,187,193,194). Urban and sub-urban areas have higher population densities (25,41,45,48,58,62,75,98,105,109,113,119,127,151,162,171,178,(196)(197)(198)(199)(200)(201) and larger population sizes (98,202,203...…”

“…Variables that measure aspects of household and household composition were used as indicators of social vulnerability in 46 studies in the corpus. Living alone was the most common feature of household composition that studies have identified a source of vulnerability or susceptibility due to the lack of social connections or support that residing with others provide (28,42,46,49,57,73,85,93,95,100,112,118,165,182,194,198,206). Other household composition factors that were indicative of vulnerability include household type (25,42,43,75,108,111,117,118), marital status (26,43,96,126,184), family size (67,69,159,207), female headed households (158,173), family conflict (115,184), and percentage of homes with orphans (70).…”

“…Access to health care service and facility was measured through proximity to health service (e.g., lack of health center, distance from health services, pharmaceutical access, average time taken for households to get to a nearby healthcare facility) (69,70,198,215), density of health facilities (e.g., number of hospitals per capita, proportion of population covered by primary health care) (87,89,117), density of health professionals (e.g., number of medical professionals) (89), and health expenditure (e.g., mean clinical expense, total health expenditure per capita) (81,121). Most of the measures are recorded at the area level.…”

“…Studies consistently found access to health services and medical infrastructure are among the most influential indicators for sensitivity and adaptative capacity, especially for developing countries (69,183), and limited access to or lower quality of health services is associated higher vulnerability (87,89,117,151,198). People with pre-existing illness such as cardiovascular and respiratory disease (47,198), children (103,105,206), and the elderly (47,55,216) are particularly vulnerable due to additional medical needs and poor physical resistance to climate impact.…”

“…Chronic health conditions or pre-existing illness can cause adverse reactions to climate related stressors, leading to increased sensitivity to climate change. Pre-existing physical health (27,36,56,70,81,89,93,100,111,112,114,185,192,194,198,215,216,221,222) is more widely considered than pre-existing mental health (27,36,89,114,161,194) in the corpus of studies. Some studies have adopted ecological study designs using community-level health measures, such as area health condition prevalence, area mortality and life expectancy (46,92,93,100,222).…”