key: cord-0027964-0xiqxc7h
authors: Pascal, Mathilde; Phalkey, Revati; Rigal, Louise; Zoonekyndt, Amandine; Mathieu, Arnaud; Gillingham, Emma L; Denys, Sébastien; Oliver, Isabel; Chêne, Geneviève; Selbie, Duncan
title: Public health institutes and the fight against climate change
date: 2022-03-02
journal: Lancet Public Health
DOI: 10.1016/s2468-2667(22)00032-9
sha: b3b07f4f04311daf7493b8054bd8e465bf79f972
doc_id: 27964
cord_uid: 0xiqxc7h

nan

NPHIs are science-based organisations operating at the national and subnational level. Their main functions include, but are not limited to, surveillance and control of health risks, early warning systems, emergency management, regulation, prevention and health promotion, community engagement, social mobilisation for health, and research. The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated just how crucial these functions are to population wellbeing.

The functions of NPHIs are already affected by climate change worldwide. 3 Some are essential in designing evidence-based adaptation policies (eg, emergency preparedness and prevention) and supporting mitigation policies (eg, promotion of interventions on key determinants of health such as diets, lifestyles, or air pollution). However, so far, effective contributions of NPHIs to adaptation plans and mitigation strategies for climate change have remained limited, with a primary focus on health surveillance and response to a rather small number of risks (eg, heat, extreme weather events, and vector-borne, food-borne, and waterborne diseases). 3 Other public health tools such as risk assessment, social participation, health promotion, advocacy, or reductions of health inequities are underutilised. 3 Moreover, there are insufficient published studies reporting and discussing the efficiency of current climate change and health adaptation. 4 The International Association of National Public Health Institutes has developed a roadmap 5 to strengthen the role of NPHIs in climate change mitigation and adaptation policies over the next 5 years. Its priorities are the following: first, to develop advocacy actions on public health and climate change; second, to enhance capacity strengthening, competence development, and training within NPHIs; third, to increase multisectoral collaborations from the local to the international level on major environmental and social determinants of health relevant to climate actions; fourth, to support the reduction of the environmental footprint of public health services; and fifth, to monitor progress in NPHIs' involvement in climate change policies.

This roadmap also calls for resultsoriented implementation research, focusing on the following: integrated analysis of the overlapping and cascading effects of climate change, development of common indicators to support adaptation and mitigation policies, evaluation of current adaptation strategies, evaluation of the health promotion tools that could support mitigation strategies, and actionable translation of the concepts of One Health and Planetary Health. Finally, NPHIs should be more involved in research on climate change and health to harness their key roles in translating science into policy and practice.

LR); International Association of National Public Health Institutes

Climate change 2021: the physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

3 International Association of National Public Health Institutes. Survey results-the role of national public health institutes in climate change adaptation and mitigation 2021. Saint Maurice: International Association of National Public Health Institutes

Systematic mapping of global research on climate and health: a machine learning review

International Association of National Public Health Institutes. IANPHI roadmap for action on health and climate change-engaging and supporting National Public Health Institutes as key climate actors. Saint Maurice: International Association of National Public Health Institutes

We declare no competing interests. The views expressed here are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the official views of their institutions.Crown Copyright © 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.