Climate change and child health: An expanded conceptual framework

In order to understand how climate change affects child health and well-being, Swedish authors systematically reviewed the literature from January 2000 to June 2019 on the impacts of climate change on child health. For inclusion, studies needed to link explicitly an exposure to a risk factor for child health to climate change or climate variability. The 371 studies analysed showed that climate change acts through multiple pathways, both directly and indirectly, to negatively affect child health and well-being. However, the authors found gaps in knowledge. They propose the use of a broader range of research methods, the study of neglected populations and regions, analysis of the costs and benefits of mitigation and adaptation strategies to address the risks of climate change. Their expanded framework (Fig. 1) hypothesises in which areas intervention is most likely to benefit children’s current and future health and well-being. Reference