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The Climate-Health Divide: How Climate Change Will Rewire Health Care Across High-, Middle-, and Low-Income Settings
1Internal Medicine Department, Parc Taulí Hospital Universitari, Institut d'Investigació i Innovació Parc Taulí (I3PT-CERCA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08208 Sabadell, Spain.
Summary
Climate change disproportionately impacts healthcare globally, creating a climate-health divide. Addressing healthcare resilience and decarbonization together is crucial for equitable adaptation.
Area of Science:
- Global Health
- Environmental Health
- Health Systems Research
Background:
- Climate change is a significant determinant of health and health system performance.
- Varying impacts across high-, middle-, and low-income countries include heat mortality, infectious diseases, and resource limitations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a comparative framework for understanding climate change's transformation of healthcare.
- To identify adaptation priorities that are resilient, equitable, and low-carbon.
Main Methods:
- Synthesized major climate-health assessments, epidemiological studies, and decarbonization literature.
- Utilized five a priori specified climate-health pathways (direct, indirect, socially mediated) for review organization.
Main Results:
- Climate change impacts healthcare via thermal injury, altered infectious diseases, food/water insecurity, mental health, and infrastructure damage.
- High-income countries face limits of intensive care; middle-income countries grapple with expanding coverage and emissions; low-income settings face amplified losses due to undernutrition and weak primary care.
Conclusions:
- Introduced the concept of the climate-health divide, highlighting unequal conversion of climate hazards into health impacts and system responses.
- Advocated for integrated strategies for climate resilience and healthcare decarbonization.
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