Warnings about global climate change from the environmental community have largely gone unheeded, but public health professionals have the ability to reframe the debate and move the issue into public’s consciousness.
Public health workers are listened to, but so far they have been largely silent on the topic, Edward W. Maibach told a gathering at the School of Public Health’s annual Alumni Day. He contended that the environmental sciences have run their course on the issue and two thirds of Americans have negative associations with environmentalism.
“You are the answer,” Maibach, M.P.H., Ph.D., director of the Center for Climate Change Communication and professor in the Department of Communication at George Mason University. “There is a lot that can be accomplished by reframing climate change into human health issues.”
All of the speakers agreed that the consequences of climate change on human health will be profound.
Global warming will eventually affect virtually every area of human health, including respiratory ailments, cancer, food-borne diseases, nutrition, human development, mental health and heat-related mortality, said keynote speaker, Christopher Portier, Ph.D.
As the director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Portier outlined a wide range of public health implications and the need for more research in order for communities worldwide to adjust to the consequences and mitigate the effects.
Portier also called for strengthening not just the public health infrastructure, but health care itself, which he characterized as “not organized or optimized.” Infrastructure and capacity improvements are needed worldwide to meet the shifting spectrums of disease, populations and ecosystems.
Some climate models, said Portier, show regions of the world becoming more arid, while other areas will become increasingly coastal. Farming and food production are obvious areas that will need to change, he said, pointing to the example of Finnish potato farmers who have been faced with earlier-than-usual blight. In Alaska, warmer coastal water temperatures are causing parasitic blooms and melting permafrost, forcing some people to move inland and jeopardizing water and sewage safety in other communities.
Throughout history, said Portier, change and progress have resulted from failures. The ineffectiveness of witch doctors led to the science of medicine; the plague and dysentery led to improved sanitation; and disease spreading across continents began immigration control. He cautioned, however, that failing to meet the challenges of climate change might be too severe to recover from.
“The planet is on the edge. We don’t want to find [out] the consequences here,” he said.
Vectors, heat waves and the need for research
Two of the panelists, Durland Fish, Ph.D., and Jeremy Hess, M.D., M.P.H., further probed the effects of climate change in their particular areas of specialty.
Fish, a professor in the division of the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale, called for broadening the field of environmental health to include vector-borne diseases, noting that other biologic disciplines are further along in understanding the importance of climate change. Fish pointed to the mosquito as an example of how unprepared we are for evolution of the species, and of disease. “West Nile virus was the scariest thing that ever happened in my career,” he said.
Warming temperatures will increase mosquito populations and lead to higher mortality for all mammals, not just humans, potentially impacting food supply, he said. Mosquito species will move to new locations and earlier foliage will extend their breeding season in many climates, allowing more reproductive cycles. As a result, Fish predicted, malaria, dengue fever and other tropical diseases will affect many more parts of the world.