2022 Cluster Highlights

Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) Network

Research highlights

Building resilience to Australian flood disasters in the face of climate change

  • The study developed a framework to build long-term resilience to climate disasters in the health sector and highlighted the key actions on cross-sectional whole-of-system response to floods, strengthening NCD prevention, implementing a stronger environmental public health surveillance for infectious diseases, early warning systems and public and mental health services.

Hospitalization Costs of Respiratory Diseases Attributable to Temperature in Australia and Projections for Future Costs in the 2030s and 2050s under Climate Change

  • The study highlighted the significant impact of cold temperatures on the economic burden of respiratory diseases currently in Australia and also suggest that overall temperature-attributable respiratory disease hospitalization costs are likely to increase substantially in Australia due to increasing temperature and heatwaves in the context of climate change.

Public policy initiatives

  • Prof Sotiris Vardoulakis has been appointed to the Chief Medical Officer Advisory Group for the development of the National Health and Climate Strategy.
  • HEAL team engaged with climate change and health project for Northern New South Wales Government on the development of local climate change response strategies.
  • HEAL team engaged roundtable with the National University of Singapore to explore regional health security in the context of climate change.
  • HEAL team engaged roundtable with Asian Development Bank to establish an advisory group for climate change and health to support Asia and Pacific countries in the development of climate change and health strategies.
  • HEAL team organised HEAL 2022 Conference and attracted more than 700 participants from academia, government, industry and community to explore transformational change for environmental, planetary and human health benefits for Australia and international communities.

Outreach

  • HEAL team appearance at a number of national and international conferences including the Healthy Environments And Lives 2022 Conference; International Society for Environmental Epidemiology 2022; Population Health Congress 2022; e-ASIA Climate Change Conference 2022.
  • HEAL contributed six articles to a special edition of The Health Advocate focusing on sustainability in the health sector.

 

Cynthia Parayiwa

Research highlights

Media

 

Dr Thomas Longden

Research highlights

Considering health damages and co-benefits in climate change policy assessment, The Lancet Planetary Health, September 2022. 

Australia finally has new climate laws. Now, let’s properly consider the astounding social cost of carbon, The Conversation, September 2022.

  • The Conversation article notes:

    A letter we published today in The Lancet Planetary Health outlines the importance of measuring the effects of climate change on human health when assessing the social cost of carbon.

    A key component of calculating the social cost of carbon is a damage function that typically uses a single equation to estimate a global GDP loss. However, as we argue in our letter, regional and sub-national damage functions would better capture the diverse range of climate change impacts, especially for human health and agriculture.

    Our arguments are echoed by a US Interagency Working Group on the social cost of carbon. In 2017, it recommended separating market and non-market climate damages by region and sector.

    Australia’s new annual climate change statement should also explicitly examine the health benefits of climate policies. These are likely to include fewer respiratory illnesses as a result of cleaner air, and increases in exercise associated with active travel options such as walking and cycling.

    Understanding these health benefits will also improve decision-making and could change our approach to dealing with climate change.

 

Professor Warwick McKibbin

Research highlights

Fernando R. and W. McKibbin (2022) “Antimicrobial Resistance: Designing A Comprehensive Macroeconomic Modeling Strategy”, The Brookings Institution, Center on Regulation and Markets, The Brookings Institution, Washington DC June.

  • "Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a dominant and growing global health threat that led to 1.27 million deaths in 2019. Given the widespread use of antimicrobials in agriculture and industrial applications in addition to healthcare and a range of factors affecting AMR, including climate variability, demographic trends, and plastic and metal pollution, an economy-wide approach is essential to assess its macroeconomic implications."

 

 

Roshen Fernando

Public policy initiatives

Poster presentation on the "Implications of Physical Climate Risks on Health Conditions among different Age Groups: Evidence from the Global Burden of Disease Data" at the Annual Workshop of Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research, 16 November 2022.

 

Professor Sotiris Vardoulakis

Public policy initiatives

Prof Sotiris Vardoulakis has been appointed to the Chief Medical Officer Advisory Group for the development of the National Health and Climate Strategy.