Climate Change and Infectious Disease: Is the Future Here?
Climate Change and Infectious Disease: Is the Future Here?
In September 2011 the CDC—which is leading the federal government's program to assist states and localities in addressing health issues related to climate change—plans to add climate indicators on its existing National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. This searchable product of the CDC's National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program provides users with integrated health, exposure, and hazard information and data from a variety of national, state, and city sources. The indicators provide consistent and standardized methods for comparing public health surveillance and environmental monitoring data across multiple states. They will help public health specialists begin to detect any emerging patterns that connect disease outbreaks with climate events, Luber says.
Disentangling the complex relationship between climate change and infectious diseases will require collaborations involving epidemiologists, disease ecologists, climatologists, modelers, geographic information specialists, sociologists, economists, and policy experts, says Rita Colwell, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. In small steps, this type of collaboration is beginning to take shape.
For example, last spring the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) launched GAIA (Global Assimilation of Information for Action), which features online symposia designed to let climate researchers and public health practitioners share their expertise and data. Larry J. Paxton, staff scientist and head of the APL Atmospheric and Ionospheric Remote Sensing Group, says he initiated GAIA in order to apply the principles of systems engineering—an interdisciplinary approach to managing each aspect of a large engineering project over its lifetime—to the impacts of climate change being seen around the world. Like Colwell, Paxton sees climate change as a diverse issue that is best served by interdisciplinary, collaborative efforts.
In another step, two postdoctoral students just completed their first year of a CDC-sponsored program to cross-train recent public health graduates. The program's goal is "to get some formal cross-training between public health professionals and climatologists, and hopefully begin to crack some new ground," Luber says. The students have finished up one year at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and will spend the next at the CDC studying climate change–related health effects; one student will focus on vectorborne diseases, Luber says.
Many public and clinical health professionals aren't sure where to find or how to use local and state climate data. In order to begin a conversation between health practioners, climatologists, and meteorologists—so each group can become aware of the knowledge, skills, and needs of the other—in July 2011 the CDC and other agencies cosponsored a Colloquium on Climate and Health on vectorborne diseases. The weeklong workshop gave state and local public health officials hands-on experience with climate modeling and meteorology practices, as well as talks by vectorborne disease specialists. Over the past 2 years, the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment has held state-level courses on health and climate change in conjunction with the American Medical Association.
The CDC's Climate-Ready States and Cities Initiative recently awarded grants to public health departments in eight states and two cities to help them build capacity for climate change–related health effects. The grants will fund health impact assessments and capacity building to prepare for vector-, food-, and waterborne diseases.
Meanwhile, research on the connections between climate and infectious disease continues. In one new initiative, Matthew Thomas, a professor of entomology at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, is leading a group of scientists who are studying how temperature influences the spread of dengue and malaria and how that can determine disease risk. Findings from this project should provide more clues about the spread of other vectorborne illnesses, which in turn can help health experts develop disease prevention and control tactics, Thomas says.
At the same time, Thomas and many other researchers stress that it's time to push ahead in science and try to better understand the many factors that go into a disease outbreak. He says, "We need to move beyond these extreme cases of asking if climate change does or does not affect the spread of disease." Instead, he says, researchers should embrace the many and complex factors—including but not limited to climate—that work together to initiate the spread of infectious disease.
Collaborating for the Future
In September 2011 the CDC—which is leading the federal government's program to assist states and localities in addressing health issues related to climate change—plans to add climate indicators on its existing National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. This searchable product of the CDC's National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program provides users with integrated health, exposure, and hazard information and data from a variety of national, state, and city sources. The indicators provide consistent and standardized methods for comparing public health surveillance and environmental monitoring data across multiple states. They will help public health specialists begin to detect any emerging patterns that connect disease outbreaks with climate events, Luber says.
Disentangling the complex relationship between climate change and infectious diseases will require collaborations involving epidemiologists, disease ecologists, climatologists, modelers, geographic information specialists, sociologists, economists, and policy experts, says Rita Colwell, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. In small steps, this type of collaboration is beginning to take shape.
For example, last spring the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) launched GAIA (Global Assimilation of Information for Action), which features online symposia designed to let climate researchers and public health practitioners share their expertise and data. Larry J. Paxton, staff scientist and head of the APL Atmospheric and Ionospheric Remote Sensing Group, says he initiated GAIA in order to apply the principles of systems engineering—an interdisciplinary approach to managing each aspect of a large engineering project over its lifetime—to the impacts of climate change being seen around the world. Like Colwell, Paxton sees climate change as a diverse issue that is best served by interdisciplinary, collaborative efforts.
In another step, two postdoctoral students just completed their first year of a CDC-sponsored program to cross-train recent public health graduates. The program's goal is "to get some formal cross-training between public health professionals and climatologists, and hopefully begin to crack some new ground," Luber says. The students have finished up one year at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and will spend the next at the CDC studying climate change–related health effects; one student will focus on vectorborne diseases, Luber says.
Many public and clinical health professionals aren't sure where to find or how to use local and state climate data. In order to begin a conversation between health practioners, climatologists, and meteorologists—so each group can become aware of the knowledge, skills, and needs of the other—in July 2011 the CDC and other agencies cosponsored a Colloquium on Climate and Health on vectorborne diseases. The weeklong workshop gave state and local public health officials hands-on experience with climate modeling and meteorology practices, as well as talks by vectorborne disease specialists. Over the past 2 years, the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment has held state-level courses on health and climate change in conjunction with the American Medical Association.
The CDC's Climate-Ready States and Cities Initiative recently awarded grants to public health departments in eight states and two cities to help them build capacity for climate change–related health effects. The grants will fund health impact assessments and capacity building to prepare for vector-, food-, and waterborne diseases.
Meanwhile, research on the connections between climate and infectious disease continues. In one new initiative, Matthew Thomas, a professor of entomology at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, is leading a group of scientists who are studying how temperature influences the spread of dengue and malaria and how that can determine disease risk. Findings from this project should provide more clues about the spread of other vectorborne illnesses, which in turn can help health experts develop disease prevention and control tactics, Thomas says.
At the same time, Thomas and many other researchers stress that it's time to push ahead in science and try to better understand the many factors that go into a disease outbreak. He says, "We need to move beyond these extreme cases of asking if climate change does or does not affect the spread of disease." Instead, he says, researchers should embrace the many and complex factors—including but not limited to climate—that work together to initiate the spread of infectious disease.
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