Originally published on the CGS blog on July 8, 2013.
Don Read is a dedicated Texas surgeon who worked 80 hours a week while carving out time to film his daughter’s music recitals and play with his grandchildren. He missed only four days of work over the course of a 27-year career, until he was bitten by a mosquito carrying the West Nile Virus. Within a week he was almost completely paralyzed. It took him nearly a year to regain enough stamina to work more than an hour at a time. Today he wears braces on both legs and no longer performs abdominal surgeries.
Dr. Read is one of an increasing number of Americans who have experienced a profound loss because of the growing impact of climate change. Warming temperatures allowed the mosquito that bit him to breed. In 1999 the Centers for Disease Control reported that 62 people were diagnosed with West Nile Virus, seven of whom died. By 2012, 5,674 Americans were infected and 286 had died. These infectious disease statistics indicate the scale and scope of the growing public health impacts of climate change.
One widely-cited study predicted that “climate change could be the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” Despite the urgency of this pronouncement, policy makers have yet to sound the alarm. In the four years since it appeared in The Lancet medical journal and was endorsed by American Public Health Association and World Health Organization leaders, public health has remained largely on the periphery of global climate talks. Today, a shift in focus is underway at the global, national, and local levels.
As world leaders set the post-2015 development agenda, public health is beginning to emerge as a focal point of the discussion. This is largely due to fears that any large-scale increase in the spread of disease or disruptions in food, energy, and water systems will reverse the health gains achieved around the world between 1990 and 2015, particularly in the areas of poverty and disease.
Public health is simultaneously gaining traction in the U.S. dialogue on climate change. Policymakers are beginning to acknowledge the “cascade” of climate-related public health impacts we face here in the U.S., including outbreaks of diseases such a Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, West Nile Virus, and Lyme. So far, the impacts in the U.S. have been somewhat localized but it seems likely that they’ll multiply and spread in tandem with the frequency of extreme weather events.
John Balbus, Senior Advisor for Public Health at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, discussed the issue at the widely-viewed Politics of Climate Change Forum which I attended in Washington, DC. Balbus warned of a looming public health crisis that “will have impacts on things like the ability to feed a population of 9 billion, the ability to provide water, the ability to live in the coastal areas all around the world because of massive sea level rise.” He also explained that changes in air temperature and water temperature will affect the transmission of water- and insect-borne diseases. And if the recent string of storms and extreme weather are an indicator of what’s to come, then cities and towns across the U.S. will need to reassess the emergency response capacity of local hospitals and health systems.
Re-framing climate change as a public health threat might also lead to it being taken more seriously as a national security risk. Last August, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation released the results of a study that examined three climate change messaging “frames”: environment, national security, and health. Of the three, public health was “the most likely to elicit emotional reactions consistent with support for climate change” and was viewed as “something within their realm of control, something that can make their lives better.”
Balbus admitted that public discourse on climate change and public health is lacking, which he attributed to the length of time it takes for the people to absorb and accept the science. However, simply the presence of a public health expert at such a high-visibility event suggests that it’s being elevated on the national stage.
For Don Read, the devastating impact of climate change is here and now. It is time our policy makers get the message that this global issue is more than melting ice and polar bears. It’s about the welfare of our families, our children and our future.
