Climate change and urologic care: a challenge for patients and providers

This review examines the interplay between environmental changes and urology. While there is widespread recognition of the large impacts of climate change on population health, there are specific ways in which climate change will impact urologic cares. In this article, we will review categories and pathways by which climate change will impact care and briefly discuss opportunities for climate change mitigation.

Recent literature highlights how the epidemiology of urological diseases is influenced by climate change, explaining the underlying mechanisms driving these changes. Climate change impacts urological disease through mechanisms that can be classified as first-order, second-order, and third-order effects. Whereas first-order effects are direct impacts of climate change on urologic diseases, second-order effects are situations where climate change affects more proximate risk factors for urologic disease (such as indentation of water supplies with carcinogenic chemicals after hurricanes), third-order impacts are situations where climate change and its effects limit the medical systems' ability to treat patients.

Although the effects of climate change on urologic care are complex and wide ranging, efforts to identify and categorize these effects will be critical in order to adapt to climate change and to mitigate its effects.