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According to the Children’s Climate Risk Index, climate change is already significantly affecting children globally, with approximately 1 billion children at ‘extremely high risk’ of experiencing the negative impacts of climate change. However, while research and literature linking climate change and environmental degradation to ecological and social outcomes has been rapidly proliferating, there is a noticeable lack of data when it comes to the intersection of climate, environment, and health. According to a 2021 WHO review, while documentation of ‘health impacts’ due to climate change is becoming robust, particularly in relation to infectious disease and temperature-related health hazards, many priority topics such as maternal and child health, nutrition, healthcare systems as a whole, and health actions or interventions in response to climate change are poorly documented or published on.
The Child Health Task Force hosted a nine-part webinar series in 2022-2023. The Climate Change and Health Forum is a follow up to that series. During this forum, The Child Health Task Force, UNICEF, Global Communities, and Save the Children will continue to explore the themes relate to climate and child health with other partners and networks
Session One: A Threat to Progress: Confronting the Effects of Climate Change on Child Health and Well-being’: New UNICEF report
UNICEF’s new report, ‘A Threat to Progress: Confronting the Effects of Climate Change on Child Health and Well-being’, compiles selected existing evidence from a range of academic sources on the impacts of climate change on child health and wellbeing and presents policy recommendations for action by policymakers. This forum session supported both dissemination of the topline findings and recommendations for how to protect children from climate-related adverse health impacts, as well as enabled a brief dialogue amongst collaborators and participants on how the climate and health community can work together to empower strong and urgent action. This report has been produced with the technical support of Karolinska Institutet.
This session was jointly hosted by the Children’s Environmental Health (CEH) Collaborative and CHTF, in collaboration with Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), Global Communities, Save the Children, the Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA), Karolinska Institutet (KI), and UNICEF.
Contributers:
- Abheet Solomon, Senior Adviser, UNICEF
- Dr. Tobias Alfven, Professor, Karolinska Institutet
- Dr. Jeni Miller, Executive Director, Global Climate and Health Alliance
- Giulia Gasparri, Technical Officer, PMNCH
- Dr. Hayalnesh Tarekegn (Bissie), Advisor, Climate Change and Health, Department of Global Health, Save the Children
- Cara Endyke-Doran, Sr. Director, Health, WASH, and Nutrition, Global Communities