Assessing Health Vulnerabilities and Adaptation to Climate Change: A Review of International Progress

Abstract

Climate change is increasing risks to human health and to the health systems that seek to protect the safety and well-being of populations. Health authorities require information about current associations between health outcomes and weather or climate, vulnerable populations, projections of future risks and adaptation opportunities in order to reduce exposures, empower individuals to take needed protective actions and build climate-resilient health systems. An increasing number of health authorities from local to national levels seek this information by conducting climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments. While assessments can provide valuable information to plan for climate change impacts, the results of many studies are not helping to build the global evidence-base of knowledge in this area. They are also often not integrated into adaptation decision making, sometimes because the health sector is not involved in climate change policy making processes at the national level. Significant barriers related to data accessibility, a limited number of climate and health models, uncertainty in climate projections, and a lack of funding and expertise, particularly in developing countries, challenge health authority efforts to conduct rigorous assessments and apply the findings. This paper examines the evolution of climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments, including guidance developed for such projects, the number of assessments that have been conducted globally and implementation of the findings to support health adaptation action. Greater capacity building that facilitates assessments from local to national scales will support collaborative efforts to protect health from current climate hazards and future climate change. Health sector officials will benefit from additional resources and partnership opportunities to ensure that evidence about climate change impacts on health is effectively translated into needed actions to build health resilience.

Climate Change and Health: Local Solutions to Local Challenges

“…Lessons learned from CDC’s work have already been applied in other contexts. Health Canada’s HealthADAPT program, which provides funding and assistance to ten health authorities to support their climate change and health efforts, was based on CDC’s Climate-Ready States and Cities Initiative [ 45 •, 46 ]. Strong national coordination and effective institutions can bolster local adaptive capacity [ 47 ].…”

Shifting Perspectives in Assessing Socio-Environmental Vulnerability

“…Accordingly, many planners, even some within the restoration field, have encouraged greater attention to social objectives [78].Ecological restoration can be more closely allied with environmental justice and indigenous concerns than has been commonly recognized, as revealed in the ecocultural restoration movement being advanced by many tribes [79]. This movement emphasizes the important of access to traditional foods and medicines for community health, which aligns with calls for VAAs to evaluate the impacts of climate change on the public health and food security of vulnerable populations [66,80].…”

“…As a practical matter, trends in key social indicators are often challenging to predict. For example, fewer than half of health-oriented VAAs internationally have estimated the future health impacts of climate change; that limitation reflects a common lack of data and analysis regarding relationships between climate drivers and health outcomes on which to build predictive models [66]. Other socially oriented VAAs have focused on vulnerability to widely predicted climatic impacts, particularly for low-lying coastal regions, such as increases in temperature, increased risk of intense storms and flooding, and sea-level rise [67][68][69].…”

“…However, the outcome of a particular adaptation approach may not be evident for years after it is put into practice, and long-term, retrospective evaluations of plan implementation are rare. Most countries have not completed a cycle of adaptive management by evaluating the sufficiency of baseline assessments and monitoring the success of adaptation efforts [66]. An openness to experimentation may be particularly important for advancing the adaptation science knowledge base, particularly when experiments are designed with consideration of governance institutions and with the engagement of local communities [87].…”

An Assessment of Climate Change and Health Vulnerability and Adaptation in Dominica

“…V&As provide evidence-based information about current and future risks to health, vulnerable populations, and effective adaptation options. They support efforts by public health officials to develop effective measures and build needed partnerships to protect health from climate change impacts [22,23]. The V&A was led by the Dominica Ministry of Health and Environment and received support from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), World Health Organization (WHO), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Health Canada (HC), and the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) [21].…”