Managing and Mitigating the Health Risks of Climate Change: Calling for Evidence-Informed Policy and Action

Conclusion Epidemiologists need to develop and improve research and monitoring programs to better understand the scale and immediacy of the threat of climate change to human health and act to tackle climate impacts at local, regional, and global levels as these impacts may vary with geographic area and population. Both scientific and policy communities should work together to formulate effective public policy to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to its inevitable impacts not only in this generation and, more importantly, in future generations to come. To make this process more effective and efficient, epidemiologists need to embrace policy-oriented research that often requires an interdisciplinary team to address the key research question; researchers should engage decision makers throughout the entire project and to take their feedback seriously when the project evolves; and policy recommendations should be made on the basis of scientific evidence rather than political wills. It is fundamentally important to formulate effective public health policy and adaptation strategies to cope with climate impacts because climate change may be the greatest environmental issue of our lifetime, as well as our children and grandchildren. References Caminade C, Kovats S, Rocklov J, Tompkins AM, Morse AP, Colón-González FJ, et al. 2014. Impact of climate change on global malaria distribution. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111(9):3286–3291. Confalonieri U, Tong S. 2015. Climate change...
Source: EHP Research - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Brief Communication October 2016 Source Type: research