The impact of climate change on child health – global evidence and the example of Canada

Climate change profoundly impacts child health, yet estimates of how it affects the prevalence of specific child diseases are lacking.

The overarching aim of this project is to estimate current and future climate change impacts on child health (in Canada and globally), by employing a unique translational approach combining public health research, climate science and advanced computational modelling.

Specifically, I will summarize the existing evidence and compile effect sizes of climate change impacts (Work Package 1), construct a database of climate and child health data from Canada and estimate the current and future climate change impacts on child health in Canada (Work Package 2), and, building on these methodological developments, use globally aggregated climate and child health data to model the current and future impact of climate change on children globally (Work Package 3).

The project will be conducted between 2024-2027 at the Institute for Transdisciplinary Scholarships, University of Calgary.

The results will provide quantifiable estimates of the impact of climate change on child health at a country and global level across different climate change trajectories.

As such, the findings will illustrate the cost of inaction on climate change for current and future generations of children, and identify the most cost-effective preventive measures to promote child health.