A scalable climate health justice assessment model

Area of Science:

• Environmental health
• Health equity
• Climate change impacts

Background:

• Climate change is linked to various diseases, creating health disparities.
• Existing models often lack a justice-centered approach to assess these impacts.
• Sociospatial disparities in disease burden require scalable assessment tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce a scalable "climate health justice" model.
• Assess and project disease incidence, treatment costs, and disparities linked to climate change.
• Merge environmental justice concerns with health inequalities.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a "climate health justice" model with low-cost secondary data.
• Employed International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes for transferability.
• Analyzed 2008-2010 Texas hospitalization data for cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, heat-related, and respiratory diseases.

Main Results:

• Cardiovascular diseases had the highest admission rate (5286.37/100,000), followed by asthma (517.51/100,000).
• Total treatment costs for selected diseases reached US$5.6 billion over 3 years.
• Blacks experienced disproportionate disease burden; spatial analysis identified high-risk zones.

Conclusions:

• Climate change exacerbates existing health inequalities, particularly for Black communities.
• Projected >5% increase in asthma incidence and costs by 2040-2050 in Texas due to climate change.
• Predicted trends highlight intergenerational and distributional climate health justice concerns.