Climate Change and Health

The Yale Center on Climate Change and Health (CCCH) uses Yale's multidisciplinary expertise and global reach to catalyze innovative research to address one of the greatest public-health challenges of the 21st century. Research interests of CCCH’s 52 affiliated faculty include relationships between climate change and:

• Infectious diseases
• Air pollution
• Heat-related illness
• Birth outcomes
• Food insecurity
• Violent conflict
• Public perception of and response to the health risks of climate change
• Climate and health impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from the healthcare sector
• Health co-benefits of climate change mitigation

CCCH has created two research task forces, focusing on China and New England, and facilitates innovative research through pilot grant funding.

YSPH’s Center on Climate Change and Health is a catalyst for change. One of the Center’s seminal foci is on environmental sustainability in healthcare, which, in the US, produces 10 percent of national greenhouse gases. The first initiative of its kind, Dr. Jodi Sherman spearheads the Inhaled Anesthesia Climate Initiative and Project Drawdown to affect the climate impacts of surgical procedures. Students have opportunities to support this research and apply their public health skills by partnering with area nonprofits as part of the Clinics in Environmental/Climate Justice, Sustainability and Public Health, or Hospital Workshop.

Likewise, the Clinic in Climate Justice, Climate Policy, Law and Public Health has a robust group of partners and programs each year. Past projects include:

• A study of pollution impacts in two low-income African American communities in Alabama
• Scoping and recommendations for the development of a Connecticut environmental-justice mapping tool
• Managing non-communicable diseases after natural disasters in the Caribbean
• Countering environmental racism in cosmetics: research support for the #beautyInsideOut campaign.

In addition, the center recently published its “Climate Change and Health in Connecticut 2020 Report,” which identifies best practices to address climate change impacts on health, as well as at the nexus of climate change, transportation and health in rural communities.