Evidence-based recommendations for communicating the impacts of climate change on health

Abstract

Climate change poses a multifaceted, complex, and existential threat to human health and well-being, but efforts to communicate these threats to the public lag behind what we know how to do in communication research. Effective communication about climate change’s health risks can improve a wide variety of individual and population health-related outcomes by: (1) helping people better make the connection between climate change and health risks and (2) empowering them to act on that newfound knowledge and understanding. The aim of this manuscript is to highlight communication methods that have received empirical support for improving knowledge uptake and/or driving higher-quality decision making and healthier behaviors and to recommend how to apply them at the intersection of climate change and health. This expert consensus about effective communication methods can be used by healthcare professionals, decision makers, governments, the general public, and other stakeholders including sectors outside of health. In particular, we argue for the use of 11 theory-based, evidence-supported communication strategies and practices. These methods range from leveraging social networks to making careful choices about the use of language, narratives, emotions, visual images, and statistics. Message testing with appropriate groups is also key. When implemented properly, these approaches are likely to improve the outcomes of climate change and health communication efforts.

Long-term effects of meteorological factors and extreme weather on daily outpatient visits for conjunctivitis from 2013 to 2020: a time-series study in Urumqi, China

“…In recent years, severe climate change such as global weather events with extreme surface temperatures has become more frequent and intense, taking the experience of the 2003 European summer heat wave as an example, which directly caused 44,000 additional deaths (Tobias et al 2012 ). Severe meteorological (climate) changes are expected to continue to dominate the world in the coming decades (Peters et al 2022 ). With the massive use of fossil fuels and modern industrial development leading to unstable climate change, there is growing concern about the direct impact of a range of extreme weather-related events on public health, such as temperature, humidity, or rainfall, which have been identified as risk factors for the spread of some common clinical diseases such as malaria (Ninphanomchai et al 2014 ), childhood diarrhea (Bradatan et al 2020 ), and COVID-19 (Zhang et al 2020 ).…”

Long-term effects of meteorological factors and extreme weather on daily outpatient visits for conjunctivitis from 2013 to 2020: a time-series study in Urumqi, China

“…In recent years severe climate change such as global weather events with extreme surface temperatures have become more frequent and intense, taking the experience of the 2003 European summer heat wave as an example, which directly caused 44,000 additional deaths (Tobias et al 2012). Severe meteorological (climate) changes are expected to continue to dominate the world in the coming decades (Peters et al 2022). With the massive use of fossil fuels and modern industrial development leading to unstable climate change, there is growing concern about the direct impact of a range of extreme weather-related events on public health, such as temperature, humidity, or rainfall, which have been identi ed as risk factors for the spread of some common clinical diseases such as malaria (Ninphanomchai et al 2014), childhood diarrhea (Bradatan et al 2020), and COVID-19 (Zhang, Xue and Jin 2020).…”

Multisolving innovations: How digital equity, e‐waste, and right‐to‐repair policies can increase the supply of affordable computers

“…Multisolving innovations can broaden the coalition of activists in support of a given policy issue and can be strategically framed to appeal to constituent bases that might otherwise be disinterested or even antagonistic (e.g., framing environmental policies around health outcomes to appeal to conservatives) to an issue. Previous scholarship on multisolving innovations has primarily explored policies at the intersection of health and the environment as a means of increasing cross‐stakeholder support (e.g., Charles et al, 2021; Peters et al, 2022). Here we aim to identify policies that may serve as multisolving innovations for the digital equity, environmental, and labor rights communities.…”