Climate Change and Public Health: Impacts and Policies

This article discusses the impacts of climate change on public health, including the effects on vulnerable communities and the healthcare system. It explores the importance of vulnerability assessment, healthcare policies, and adaptation strategies. The American Public Health Association (APHA) and the National Climate Assessment are highlighted as key players in addressing climate change and health issues.

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Introduction
The Climate change is one of the greatest threats to the public health in today’s world. It
will excessively affect the most vulnerable communities starting from the instant health effect of
change in weather events which includes heating events and their following effect on the
growing infectious disease, air, water and food quality and safety, and many more factors. It is
observed that the majority of Americans take the climate change as very positive part where as
almost half of Americans take it as a major threat for the nature and their health. This de-
prioritization is found to reverberate over the national policies, ethics and social factors (Weaver
et al., 2017). The climate change is found to be effecting the health condition of people in the
region of America as well as the economic, social and governmental problems.
The American Public Health Association (APHA) is the leading national public health
policy which ensures the management of the national issues related to the public health (APHA,
2019).
Discussion
The climate change puts a drastic impact on the environment and to people and their
health and wellbeing. The impact of the changing climate directly affects the health and living of
the population as well as the health care system as it increases various kinds of negative factors
such as diseases and infections and also effects the production of the population. It is found to
build huge burden on the health care systems as the increasing number of health issue cases are
creating difficulties for the healthcare services to provide equal and effective treatment and care.
In addition, the change in climate is not the only issue which defines susceptibility but it is

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correlated to various other factors also. Therefore, it becomes an essential part of the health care
policies to comprehend the impact of the climate change, evaluation of the vulnerability and then
adaptation in such condition at the local scale is also a crucial aspect. Regardless of the
importance of this vulnerability assessment of the climate change to recognize the populations
and localities that are most vulnerable and flexible to climate change risk factors (Grimm,
Groffman, Staudinger & Tallis, 2016).
The National Climate Assessment provides detailed information regarding the increasing climate
change and its negative impacts on the health condition of the population. The change in climate
is found to affect the health condition and increase the public health risks through floods, heat
waves, droughts and other extreme weather and climate changes. These factors also induce
various other issues such as growth and spread of infectious diseases leading g to increasing
number of morbidity and mortality. The regions of America are more susceptible and vulnerable
to the effects of changing climate and hence the governments are implementing various
interventions and policies to survive such conditions (Kjellstrom et al., 2016).
Healthcare assessment and implication of policies
The healthcare assessment helps in assessing the health risks of the climate change that are not
qualified equally. People such as children, elder adults, communities of color, and low-economy
communities are found to be more vulnerable to the climate change health conditions.
It is important to implement policies such as Clean Power Plant in order to reduce carbon
emissions from different power plants that will help in improving the air quality. It can be useful
to provide resources and supporting measures to the state and local health care organizations to

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address the effective impacts of changing climate in their communities and their health
conditions (Melillo, 2014).
It will be a helpful strategy to implement survey and campaign to understand the values of the
community regarding their health condition relation with the climate change and to implement
strategies, education, supplies and proper facilities to retain the condition. It is important to
develop a health care framework which will help linking the pro-climate events to precedence
existing values. The implication of the APHA’s public health policies and The National Climate
Assessment in order to help the policies to act in their proper manner for the healthcare issue.
Adaptation of these policies might include allowing for local, state, district, nationwide, and
worldwide jurisdictional acknowledgement (Pederson et al., 2015).
Conclusion
In order to conclude it can be stated that the goal of these policies related to health
care are:
Awareness: every citizen of the United States, starting with the public health ground, recognizing
the importance of practices, the policies and the public choices which would recover the health
outcomes and also will help in addressing the climate change, and also integrating action to
proceed and approve the actions.
Enable environment: the local and national culture, inspiration and enable environment helps in
keeping the climate healthy and the population safe.
Policy: the environmental justice and the health equity are the main aspects to the policies which
are designed to address the issues of the climate change and related health problems.

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Leadership: APHA is also recognized as one of the most important voice throughout the
connection between the climate change and health related issue (APHA, 2019).

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Reference:
APHA (2019). National Climate Assessment grave reminder of action needed to protect public
health from climate change. [online] APHA.org. Available at:
https://www.apha.org/news-and-media/news-releases/apha-news-releases/2018/national-
climate-assessment-2018 [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019].
Grimm, N. B., Groffman, P., Staudinger, M., & Tallis, H. (2016). Climate change impacts on
ecosystems and ecosystem services in the United States: process and prospects for
sustained assessment. In The US National Climate Assessment (pp. 97-109). Springer,
Cham. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-41802-5_8
Kjellstrom, T., Briggs, D., Freyberg, C., Lemke, B., Otto, M., & Hyatt, O. (2016). Heat, human
performance, and occupational health: a key issue for the assessment of global climate
change impacts. Annual review of public health, 37, 97-112.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032315-021740
Melillo, J. M. (2014). Climate change impacts in the United States: the third national climate
assessment. Government Printing Office. Retrieved
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(2017). Reframing climate change assessments around risk: recommendations for the US
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From:https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7494/meta