MEDBOX Issue Brief no.23.
The intent of this Issue Brief is to raise awareness about heat waves as a result of climate change and its impact on
health. More information on the topic of climate change and ...>planetary health you can find in our PLANETARY
HEALTH TOOLBOX www.planetaryhealthbox.org
more
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for 72% of all deaths globally and this proportion is growing. Greatest increases in NCD mortality are seen in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Places that only a generation ago knew famine are
today experiencing epidemics of obesity, diabetes..., cardiovascular disease, and cancer. These epidemics reduce human capital in developing countries and their economic costs are so great that they threaten to slow and even undercut trajectories of economic and social development.
more
Lancet Planet Health 2022;6: e760–68
The emergence of COVID-19 has drawn the attention of health researchers sharply back to the role that food systems can play in generating human disease burden.... But emerging pandemic threats are just one dimension of the complex relationship between agriculture and infectious disease, which is evolving rapidly, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) that are undergoing rapid food system transformation. This changing relationship is examined through four current disease issues.
more
Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people, yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiet...y in children and young people globally and its relationship with perceived government response.
more
The Lancet Planetary Health 2022: 6:e371-379
The Lancet, Planetary Health Volume 5, ISSUE 11, e766-e774, November 01, 2021
Increasing human demand for water and changes in water availability due to climate change threatens water security wor...ldwide. Additionally, exploitation of water resources induces stress on freshwater environments, leading to biodiversity loss and reduced ecosystem services. We aimed to conduct a spatially detailed assessment of global human water stress for low to high environmental flow (EF) protection.
more
Grand Challenges - Planetary Health- This guide highlights a range of resources to explore solutions to the challenges of rising global temperature, and increased industrial effluences damaging the ...environment and impacting human health.
more
The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 6, ISSUE 4, e342-e349, April 01, 2022. Human impacts on earth-system processes are overshooting several planetary...n> boundaries, driving a crisis of ecological breakdown. This crisis is being caused in large part by global resource extraction, which has increased dramatically over the past half century. We propose a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown by assessing nations’ cumulative material use in excess of equitable and sustainable boundaries.
more
The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 4, ISSUE 12, e566-e576, December 01, 2020. Exposure to temperature variability has been associated with increased risk of mortality and morbidity. We aimed to eval...uate whether the association between short-term temperature variability and hospitalisation was affected by local socioeconomic level in Brazil.
more
The Lancet Planetary Health, Volume 2, ISSUE 9, Pe398-e405, September 01, 2018.
Reduction of antibiotic consumption will not be sufficient to control antimicrobial resistance because contagion—t...he spread of resistant strains and resistance genes—seems to be the dominant contributing factor. Improving sanitation, increasing access to clean water, and ensuring good governance, as well as increasing public health-care expenditure and better regulating the private health sector are all necessary to reduce global antimicrobial resistance.
more
The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 5, ISSUE 7, e466-e478, July 01, 2021
Transmission of many infectious diseases depends on interactions between humans, animals, and the environment. Incorporating... these complex processes in transmission dynamic models can help inform policy and disease control interventions. We identified 20 diseases involving environmentally persistent pathogens (ie, pathogens that survive for more than 48 h in the environment and can cause subsequent human infections), of which indirect transmission can occur from animals to humans via the environment.
more
Mosquito-borne diseases are expanding their range, and re-emerging in areas where they had subsided for decades. The extent to which climate change influences the transmission suitability and population at risk of mosquito-borne diseases across different altitudes and population densities has not be...en investigated. The aim of this study was to quantify the extent to which climate change will influence the length of the transmission season and estimate the population at risk of mosquito-borne diseases in the future, given different population densities across an altitudinal gradient.
The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 5, ISSUE 7, e404-e414, July 01, 2021
more
Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancers, and other non-communicable diseases are among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries, and The Lancet Taskforce recently made the case for investing in non-...communicable disease prevention. Now, in The Lancet Planetary Health, Benjamin Bowe and colleagues report that exposure to PM2·5 air pollution is indeed a risk factor for diabetes.
more
Mortality due to enteric infections is projected to increase because of global warming; however, the different temperature sensitivities of major enteric pathogens have not yet been considered in projections on a global scale. We aimed to project global temperature-attributable enteric infection mor...tality under various future scenarios of sociodemographic development and climate change.
The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 5, ISSUE 7, e436-e445, July 01, 2021
more
The policy brief focuses on four key areas for intervention - air pollution, energy, transport and food systems. Air pollution causes 7 million deaths annually, and is a leading cause of both NCDs and climate change, thus all interventions to reduce air pollution have a positive impact on both human... and planetary health. In the energy sector, transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is if vital importance to improving health, with mortality rates due to coal-generated electricity 1,000 times higher than for wind-generated electricity.
Promoting active transport such as walking and cycling in place of motorised transport has the dual benefit of reducing both air pollution and physical activity. Livestock production alone accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, with added emissions from food which are highly process and transported over long distances, and thus locally sourced plant based diets both prevent NCDs and promote human and planetary health.
more
Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems. Summary Report of the EAT Lancet Commission
This report was prepared by EAT and is an adapted summary of the Commission Food in The Anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on ...ghlight medbox">Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems.
To access the EAT–Lancet Commission Hub page at The Lancet on the website https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/EAT
You can download the Summary Report in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
more
The Quality Criteria for Health National Adaptation Plans (HNAPs) presents examples of good practice in HNAP development to assist countries in developing a comprehensive, feasible and implementable plan. The criteria are also intended to guide coun...tries in setting the foundation for a long-term iterative HNAP process. The proposed criteria are not prescriptive and should be adapted to dynamic country contexts, uncertain and changing climatic conditions, and new knowledge and technologies.
9 February 2021
more
This report aims to support countries in the necessary transition toward healthier, more sustainable diets by integrating biodiversity in food-based interventions to support nutrition and health. It... is intended to help guide decision-makers in the health, nutrition and other sectors, to:
Consider the important role of biodiversity in food systems for the development of integrated interventions to support healthy, diverse and sustainable diets;
To focus investments and country support for more comprehensive, coordinated and cross-cutting public health and nutrition projects and policies; and
To strengthen the resilience of food systems, health systems, and societies, each of which are each increasingly compromised by widespread ecological degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change.
Biodiversity at every level (genetic, species and ecosystem level) is a foundational pillar for food security, nutrition, and dietary quality. It is the basic source of variety in essential foods, nutrients, vitamins and minerals, and medicines, and underpins life-sustaining ecosystem services. It is a core environmental determinant of health, often a vital ingredient of healthy nutritional outcomes and livelihoods, gender equality, social equity, and other health determinants.
Biodiversity can play a more prominent role in planning for nutritional outcomes in various ways, e.g. by facilitating the production of nutritious fruits and plant products, sustaining livelihoods through more efficient production and increasing the diversity of products available in markets. This Guidance presents and expands on six core building blocks for mainstreaming biodiversity for nutrition and health:
Cross-sectoral knowledge development and knowledge co-production;
Enabling environments;
Integration;
Conservation and the wider use of biodiversity;
Education and awareness-raising;
Monitoring and evaluation;
This WHO report builds on an unprecedented opportunity to mainstream biodiversity in order to support healthy and sustainable diets, and offers the necessary technical guidance to catalyze and support a transformation of the global food system and transition to healthier, more sustainable diets.
more
Urbanization, land use, global trade and industrialization have led to profound and negative impacts on nature, biodiversity and ecosystems across the world. The ongoing depletion of natural resources not only afects environmental conditions but also has an enormous impact on the well-being and secu...rity of societies.
This report provides an overview of the impacts of the natural environment on human health. It presents the ways nature and ecosystems can support and protect health and well-being, and describes how nature degradation and loss of biodiversity can threaten human health.
more
This publication presents a comprehensive methodology to support the Member States of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in preparing for and responding to heat-health risks in the Region o...f the Americas. It builds on World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization global documents, as well as on the disaster preparedness methodologies employed throughout the countries of the Region. This publication is part of an effort coordinated by PAHO to support Member States in multihazard preparedness, and includes: early warning system strengthening; threat characterization; activation and deactivation procedure definition; and institutional coordination. It engages different disciplines and recognizes the importance of intersectoral collaboration to respond to heat-health risks. It aims to bring awareness of the impacts of heat on the health of people of the Americas to public health decisionmakers, and thereby strengthen health service provision.
more