Climate change, accelerating alarmingly over the past several decades, has impacted human health globally, manifesting in heat-related illness, displacement and migration, increased spread of infectious disease, food and water insecurity, and disruption to healthcare services.
It is exacerbating health inequities, with vulnerable populations—including those in low-income countries, children, the elderly, and those with pre-existing health conditions—facing the greatest risks.
Researchers at CUNY SPH are engaged in measuring these interconnected effects and creating tools to help health organizations around the world counter them to protect population health.
They’re also taking on the challenge of how to communicate the urgency of current and impending climate change threats to governments, business leaders and the broader public in order to raise awareness and promote preparedness.
Climate change and HIV outcomes
Two grants from the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a four-year, $3.2 million award and a 12-month, $550,000 administrative supplement, will support innovative research to advance the understanding of how climate change and extreme weather influence HIV-related health outcomes around the world. A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (CUNY ISPH), housed at CUNY SPH; the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF); the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB); and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will examine the effects of extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, hurricanes, and drought on short and long-term outcomes of more than two million people living with HIV who have enrolled in HIV care at clinics in 44 countries around the world.
“Most of the 37 million people living with HIV are on treatment, which requires continuous access to antiretroviral medications both to ensure a normal life expectancy and prevent onward transmission of the virus,” says Distinguished Professor Denis Nash, executive director of CUNY ISPH and a principal investigator of both studies. “We know very little about the ways that extreme weather influences HIV outcomes and, by extension, its past and present influences on the trajectory of the HIV pandemic.”
A health surveillance assistant with the Malawi Ministry of Health provides services to HIV-positive woman in an antiretroviral therapy (ART) clinic built by the Tingathe program with support from USAID. Credit: Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation–Malawi / Robbie Flick
The research will combine data from the global IeDEA cohort collaboration1 with climate data to understand the long-term effects of extreme weather on HIV treatment outcomes. The goal is to see how disruptions in care, medication access, and clinic visits are influenced by weather patterns, using information like daily temperature and rainfall data.
“We are trying to create a new research frontier within the IeDEA network focused on climate and HIV outcomes, which has further relevance for the larger group of IeDEA-engaged stakeholders, such as the WHO, UNAIDS and PEPFAR, as well as for other health outcomes beyond HIV/AIDS,” says Nash.
The team will also conduct qualitative research in countries like the Philippines and Rwanda to identify strategies people and clinics use to cope with extreme weather. The research could provide new insights into how climate change could be a barrier to ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic, as well as inform strategies to mitigate these impacts on HIV care and other chronic diseases requiring continuous treatment.
Disease vectors are living organisms that can transmit infectious pathogens between humans, or from animals to humans. Many of these are bloodsucking insects, such as mosquitoes and the tsetse fly. Others are found in important water sources, such as species of freshwater snails. Due to climate change, several vectors have already expanded their ranges in latitude and altitude, and the length of the season during which they are active is increasing. These trends are expected to continue as the climate warms. Source: WHO
How climate change is increasing the spread of disease-carrying insects and their impact on global health
The Intramural Targeted Climate Change & Health (ITCCH) program has awarded a two-year, $185,042 grant to CUNY ISPH Investigators Nash Rochman, Elizabeth Kelvin, and colleagues to support work to improve access to historical and forecasted climate data to better understand the impacts of climate change on infectious disease transmission. The multidisciplinary team of researchers from the CUNY ISPH and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will build a website to house historical and forecasted climate data including global temperature measurements, vector range of disease-carrying insects, and population density to facilitate the incorporation of these global change variables into epidemiological modeling and surveillance.
Monitoring air pollutants in underserved communities
Associate Professor Brian Pavilonis and team were awarded nearly $500,000 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to monitor air pollutants in New York State communities with environmental and health outcome disparities stemming from air pollution exposure.
The three-year project seeks to improve air quality and public health across these neighborhoods by establishing a community-driven network platform to enhance the understanding of sustainable outdoor and indoor air quality.
“Air pollution has been implicated in the development of many chronic diseases and disproportionately affects marginalized communities,” says Pavilonis. “This grant will help us better understand air pollution across New York State, with an emphasis on communities that have been previously underserved.”
The importance of effective communication
Despite urgent warnings from the scientific community about the dire consequences of climate change—and what people can do to mitigate it—there has been a lack of urgent response from government and business leaders, as well as much of the public. Better communication is critical if communities are to prepare and adapt to climate change-related risks.
In a special edition2 of the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives (JHC), led by researchers from the CUNY SPH and the New York City Preparedness & Recovery Institute (PRI), the scientific and health communications community assesses these challenges and offers a road map to more effective communications. The special issue, “Climate Communication Challenges: Hazards, Health, Preparedness,” was co-edited by Associate Professor Brian Pavilonis, former CUNY SPH professor Ilias Kavouras, and Professor Bruce Y. Lee.
The issue explores how misinformation spreads, the importance of unified communication, and the need to connect human actions to climate and health consequences.
“Climate change is not a localized event: it will touch the lives of everyone,” says Pavilonis, who also co-leads the PRI Workforce Capacity & Preparedness Team. “This special issue highlights the challenging and resource-intensive nature of climate communication and provides strategies tailored to various stakeholders. The global climate is intricately interconnected and events in one part of the globe can have cascading effects elsewhere from food shortages to climate refugees.”
“We are walking toward a slow-motion catastrophe, and it is imperative that we act with a unified voice so that we depart from the status quo,” says Lee, PRI chief technical officer and executive director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Communication in Health (CATCH) at CUNY SPH. “Going forward we need to develop and use newer systems-oriented ways to better communicate the complexities connecting human activity, climate change, and the resulting health and economic impacts.”
This special issue offers a comprehensive assessment of the present communications challenges and strategies to overcome them. Topics include a snapshot of current beliefs around climate change and health from a national survey; how politicization and differential media treatment reinforce polarized perceptions of climate change; the relative risks and benefits of communicating fear and anxiety in communities; and a broad systems approach to incorporate the complexities of both climate change and how information is communicated, formally and informally.
The cascading effects of climate change will impact nearly every aspect of population health. In the months and years ahead, CUNY SPH will continue to play a role in helping to stave off the worst of climate change harms.
Findings cited in the journal special edition2 indicate a nonlinear connection between climate anxiety and intentions to engage in pro-environmental behavior. While higher levels of climate anxiety initially lead to increased pro-environmental actions, beyond a certain point, further increases in anxiety are associated with a decline in such behavior.
1. IeDEA International epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (https://www.iedea.org/)
2. Journal of Health Communication, “Climate Communication Challenges: Hazards, Health, Preparedness” (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/uhcm20/29/sup1)
