Natural and unnatural synergies: climate change policy and health equity

Walpole, Sarah; Rasanathan, Kumanan; Campbell-Lendrum, Diarmid

doi:10.2471/blt.09.067116

Cited by 34 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…2 The direct effects of climate change and policies aimed at mitigation and adaptation will have inequitable impact within and between populations. 30 To achieve health equity for all people it is necessary to address climate stabilisation, the eradication of poverty and ameliorate the inequitable impacts of climate change. 31 In Australia, the population groups likely to be affected most by climate change are people on low incomes, the sick, the elderly, people in poor quality or rented housing, and people living in outer suburbs with poor transport infrastructure and the need to travel for work and to access services.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health promotion interventions to address climate change using a primary health care approach: a literature review

Walker

Hassall²,

Chaplin³

et al. 2011

Health Promot J Aust

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Issue addressed This project explored the literature in which key concepts in primary health care and health promotion are overtly applied to the problem of climate change. This paper contains a discussion of the literature relevant to health promotion principles and intervention strategies for addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation in the primary health care sector. The concept of primary health care is that used by the World Health Organization, based on the Declaration of Alma Ata and often referred to as comprehensive primary health care to differentiate it from primary medical care. Methods This was a review of literature identified in electronic databases using two sets of search terms. Set A consisted of ‘climate change or global warming or greenhouse effect’ and set B consisted of 11 key concepts in primary health care and health promotion, for example community resilience, health promotion, social change, food security and economic development. Relevant literature was identified at the intersection of search term A with a term from set B. A search was completed for each set B term. Results This paper reports a discussion of major categories of health promotion interventions, namely health communication, community building and settings approaches and uses examples drawn from literature on community resilience and summer heat. These interventions are all applicable to the primary health care sector. Conclusion There is a small literature on health promotion interventions for climate change mitigation and adaptation but it is incomplete and scattered across many sources. An important area for further research is to link the logic of service provision in primary health care to the logic of mitigation and adaptation in a changing environment. Interventions that link the logic must also link diverse services to provide coherent action on local and domestic scales, the scales at which primary health care acts. Another research gap is in regard to institutional change in the primary health care sector. How do the patterns of knowledge, practice and values need to change in the array of organisations that make up comprehensive primary health care? So what? This literature review can support primary health care agencies to design interventions to address climate change using health communication, community building and settings approaches in the knowledge that there is peer‐reviewed literature to support such initiatives. It also identifies two areas of research that would support institutional adaptation within comprehensive primary health care to enable it to fulfil its role in the societal response to climate change.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health promotion interventions to address climate change using a primary health care approach: a literature review

Walker

Hassall²,

Chaplin³

et al. 2011

Health Promot J Aust

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show abstract

“…For example, by reducing car use to cut emissions, we may also improve population health by improving air quality and levels of physical activity 10 , 11 . However, either type of policy may also bring some adverse health effects, particularly for marginalized communities 12 , 13 . For example, if policies are not carefully designed, the use of market mechanisms or taxation to reduce emissions can reduce low-income groups’ access to essential services.…”

Section: Climate Change and Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change, cash transfers and health

Pega

Shaw

Rasanathan

et al. 2015

Bull. World Health Organ.

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The forecast consequences of climate change on human health are profound, especially in low- and middle-income countries and among the most disadvantaged populations. Innovative policy tools are needed to address the adverse health effects of climate change. Cash transfers are established policy tools for protecting population health before, during and after climate-related disasters. For example, the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Programme provides cash transfers to reduce food insecurity resulting from droughts. We propose extending cash transfer interventions to more proactive measures to improve health in the context of climate change. We identify promising cash transfer schemes that could be used to prevent the adverse health consequences of climatic hazards. Cash transfers for using emission-free, active modes of transport – e.g. cash for cycling to work – could prevent future adverse health consequences by contributing to climate change mitigation and, at the same time, improving current population health. Another example is cash transfers provided to communities that decide to move to areas in which their lives and health are not threatened by climatic disasters. More research on such interventions is needed to ensure that they are effective, ethical, equitable and cost–effective.

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“…The scientific community increasingly agrees on the climate–health connection in the natural world (Costello et al, ; Marmot, Friel, Bell, Houweling, & Taylor, ; McMichael & Anthony, ; Rogelij et al, ; Steiner, ; Sturchio, ; Walpole, Rasanathan, & Campbell‐Lendrum, ; World Health Organization [WHO], ) . Since the 1990s, the increasing frequency and severity of extreme deadly weather events and the increasing spread of infectious vectors have visibly highlighted the link, even if some specific pathways and impacts, especially at regional and local levels, remain unclear (Costello et al, ; Gottwald, ; Haines, McMichael, & Epstein, ; Holmes, ; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], ; WHO, ).…”

Section: Strengthening Scientific Consensus and Un Failurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While most of the attention has been on how climate change affects human health, there is growing interest in how health affects climate change, such as the large carbon footprints of hospitals and co‐benefits of active participation (Walpole et al, ; WHO, ; WHO and Health Without Harm, ). Both climate change and health are increasingly considered as both causes and cures for the challenges each confronts.…”

Section: Strengthening Scientific Consensus and Un Failurementioning

confidence: 99%

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Connecting Climate Change and Health Through Global Summitry

Kirton¹,

Kulik²,

Bracht³

et al. 2014

World Med & Health Policy

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The strengthening scientific consensus about the connection between climate change and health is not reflected at the relevant organizations of the United Nations (UN). It has been more adequately addressed by the informal Group of Eight (G8). Relative to the G8 with its comprehensive agenda, intermittent UN summits focused on health, environment, or development have lagged in recognizing and responding to the connection. This poorer UN performance is not caused by changes in the scientific consensus, or by severe climate and health shocks, which should spur both summit systems, particularly the UN, to act. It depends more on the comprehensiveness, flexibility, annual occurrence, and compact like-mindedness of the G8 summits compared to the subject-specific, organizationally constrained, intermittent, internally divergent UN ones. This suggests the UN will struggle to transform the Millennium Development Goals into new post-2015 sustainable development goals and define a post-2015 climate change control regime with a closer climate-health connection, unless the G8 and now Group of 20 summits address the connection in a UNsupportive way.

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Natural and unnatural synergies: climate change policy and health equity

Cited by 34 publications

References 6 publications

Health promotion interventions to address climate change using a primary health care approach: a literature review

Health promotion interventions to address climate change using a primary health care approach: a literature review

Climate change, cash transfers and health

Connecting Climate Change and Health Through Global Summitry

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