Thammasat University students interested in allied health sciences, climate change, development studies, futurology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 23 October Microsoft Teams webinar on Climate Change and Child Health – What do We Know in 2024?
The event, on Wednesday, 23 October 2024 at 9pm Bangkok time, is organized by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).
The event announcement explains:
The world today is at least 1.1° C warmer than during pre-industrial times, with resulting changes in weather and climate extremes in every world region. Children are uniquely vulnerable to climate change. Children suffer mortality and morbidity from extreme weather events, infectious diseases, respiratory diseases and other physical and mental health issues associated with climate change. Also, climate change could increase disease risks by eroding the basic pillars of health for children, such as nutrition, water and sanitation and education. However, large research gaps persist, and action on climate change from a child health perspective is lacking. In this talk, Dr. Daniel Helldén will highlight the worrying concerns regarding climate change and child health, exploring what we know in 2024 toward an effective, sustainable and equitable childcare solution.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of child health and climate change.
Students are invited to click on this link for the event.
The speaker will be Dr. Daniel Helldén, a postdoctoral scholar at the UNU Hub at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Dr. Helldén is affiliated with the Karolinska Institute, a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden and one of the foremost medical research institutes globally.
The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Dr. Helldén is coauthor of a report published by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), The Climate-Changed Child, which is available online for free download at this link:
https://www.unicef.org/reports/climate-changed-child
The Karolinska Institute website noted earlier this year:
New Unicef report by KI researchers on how climate change affects children’s health
Unicef is launching a report written by two KI researchers that describes the devastating consequences of climate change for children’s health globally. The report summarises research from the field and over 30 experts. It identifies the six main climate hazards and shows that they pose a serious threat to children’s health and well-being.
“Research on how climate affects human health is developing rapidly and we are learning more every month. When it comes to how climate change affects children’s health specifically, there have been many new studies, but at the same time there has been no overall concrete summary, which makes the area difficult to understand”, says Daniel Helldén, researcher at the Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet.
Daniel Helldén and Tobias Alfvén, researchers at the same department, together with Unicef, have conducted a literature review and gathered insights from over 30 experts in health and climate change. The results are presented in the report A Threat to Progress: Confronting the effects of climate change on child health and well-being.
Major climate-related hazards
Despite great successes over the past 30 years in reducing child mortality, the report shows that climate change poses a severe threat to child health and well-being.
Children are disproportionately affected because they are uniquely vulnerable to environmental hazards compared to adults due to physiological, psychosocial and behavioural factors. For example, children are less able to regulate body heat and have lower absorptive capacity than adults, which is particularly dangerous during heat waves.
The report identifies six major hazards that affect children’s health: extreme heat, drought, wildfires, floods and storms, air pollution and ecosystem changes.
These hazards can lead to adverse birth outcomes, increased risk of death in neonates and infants, and the intensification of infectious diseases like malaria.
Climate-related hazards exacerbate problems such as food and water shortages, infrastructure damage, service disruptions and displacement. These factors, together with socio-economic status, gender, location and pre-existing health conditions, influence the extent of the impact on children.
Recommendations for action
The report calls for urgent action to reduce emissions and meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit, protect children from climate impacts, and prioritise children’s health in climate policy.
Specific actions include providing information to health care providers, strengthening climate-resilient primary health care and ensuring access to nutritious food and clean water.
“The aim is for the report to inform researchers, policy makers and organisations ahead of and during the climate negotiations in Azerbaijan during COP29”, says Daniel Helldén.
The report observes:
In recent decades, the world has seen remarkable progress in reducing the number of deaths in children under 5, from 93 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 37 per 1,000 live births in 2022.
Despite this progress, however, many of today’s children – and their chance to enjoy good health and wellbeing throughout their lives – is at risk from the impacts of climate change.
Children are disproportionately affected because they are uniquely vulnerable to environmental hazards compared to adults. The interplay of physiological, psychosocial, and behavioural factors and dependence
on caregivers renders children more susceptible to the detrimental health impacts of climate change.
While the evidence on the impact of climate change on children’s health and well-being is growing, research often focuses on the effects of individual
hazards.
This report therefore aims to provide a comprehensive ‘stocktake’ of the impacts of climate change on children across six major hazards that impact
their health and well-being: extreme heat, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms, air pollution and ecosystem changes.
The report finds that climate change is impacting almost every aspect of child health and well-being from pregnancy to adolescence.
The health impacts compound as children face climate-related hazards that often overlap. Of great concern is the risk of adverse birth outcomes, including pre-term birth and low birth weight, increasing across most climate-related
hazards. […]
Protect children from the impact of climate change:
Adaptation actions should: urgently equip caregivers and service providers with the information and skills they need to protect children; strengthen climate-resilient primary health care; safeguard access to nutritious food and safe water; improve preparedness and response to environmental hazards;
and implement child-sensitive social protection measures.
The report outlines specific asks in each of these areas.
Prioritize child health and well-being in climate policy,
investment and action:
Climate action must centre on the impact on child health and well-being, ensuring targeted strategies are implemented to protect children’s health, safety and future.
Specific actions and investments are needed to generate local data, prioritizing child-focused vulnerability assessments, addressing gaps in research, and fostering multistakeholder collaboration to bridge knowledge-to-action gaps on children’s environmental health, including with the participation of children and youth.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)