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Climate change and health

Proceedings from the COP21 “Healthy Lives on a Healthy Planet” 2015 event in Paris

Edited by Antoine Flahault, Anneliese Depoux and Corinne Kowalski

This collection of Public Health Reviews is dedicated to the topic of Climate Change and Health, which is a global challenge as climate change has become a worldwide threat to health. The COP21 in Paris in December 2015 marks a turning point in the fight against climate change. On this occasion, the Centre Virchow-Villermé was selected to organize a side event of the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) dedicated to ˝Healthy Lives on a Healthy Planet˝ with the aim to promote health as an important argument in the negotiations on climate change.

This initiative was directly supported by their parent organizations, the Université Sorbonne Paris Cité and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and academic partners: the University of Geneva, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the University of Heidelberg, with sponsorship by the World Health Organization, the Rockefeller Foundation and The Lancet.

COP21 assembled thousands of participants from around the world, with the common goal and passion for helping our policymakers to make the necessary and courageous decisions at this critical stage of climate negotiations for the sake of the planet and for global public health. The ˝Healthy Lives on a Healthy Planet˝ event included a program with distinguished lecturers to highlight cutting-edge knowledge and experience in the field of planetary health, climate change and health related issues to engage. The purpose of this conference was to engage and discuss the next steps in an open arena and to debate on the content of research, anticipated in the coming months and years, including the work of young researchers committed to this domain.

The global effort required today will have an impact on many areas that interact with health. This collection assembled presentations developed to raise awareness in the public health community with the purpose of promoting the future of research and policy in this global challenge for planetary health. 

Publication charges for this collection were funded by the Centre Virchow-Villermé. Articles have undergone the journal's standard peer-review process overseen by the Handling Editor, who declares no competing interests.

View all collections published in Public Health Reviews.

  1. The translation of science from research to real-world change is a central goal of public health. Communication has an essential role to play in provoking a response to climate change. It must first raise awar...

    Authors: Anneliese Depoux, Mathieu Hémono, Sophie Puig-Malet, Romain Pédron and Antoine Flahault
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2017 38:7
  2. The consequences of climate change and the impacts of human activity on the environment have made it clearer than ever before that we must evolve our current model of public health to better account for the in...

    Authors: David Rockefeller Jr.
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:32
  3. Rising CO2 in the atmosphere is the main cause of anthropogenic climate change, and the data shows a clear increase in global temperature of about 1 °C since pre-industrial levels. Changes in climate extremes are...

    Authors: Corinne Le Quéré
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:29
  4. Drawing on the report of the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on planetary health—Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch, this piece presents a discussion of the implications of the report...

    Authors: Alex Ezeh
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:27
  5. Future Earth is an international research platform providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations to a sustainable world. Future Earth 2025 Vision identified eight key focal challenges, ...

    Authors: Paul Shrivastava, Kari Raivio, Fumiko Kasuga, Joshua Tewksbury, Andy Haines and Peter Daszak
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:25
  6. Food production is a major driver of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and other environmental footprints, and dietary risk factors are contributors to non-communicable diseases. A growing body of evidence has sho...

    Authors: Lukasz Aleksandrowicz
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:23
  7. Global changes are major determinants for infectious diseases, although attributable, part of climate change remains debatable. Vector-borne diseases are prone to be impacted by global warming, although other ...

    Authors: Antoine Flahault, Rafael Ruiz de Castaneda and Isabelle Bolon
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:21
  8. Lessons learned, opportunities, and barriers to scaling up health adaptation were identified from evaluation reports and other materials from three multinational health adaptation projects covering 14 low- and...

    Authors: Kristie L. Ebi
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:17
  9. Malnutrition remains a leading cause of death in children in low- and middle-income countries; this will be aggravated by climate change. Annually, 6.9 million deaths of children under 5 were attributable dire...

    Authors: Raissa Sorgho, Jonas Franke, Seraphin Simboro, Revati Phalkey and Rainer Saeurborn
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:16
  10. The report of the Rockefeller Foundation/Lancet Commission on Planetary Health described how human health directly depends upon the environment. It takes a broad perspective not only acknowledging climate chan...

    Authors: Andy Haines
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:14
  11. Wellcome exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive. We are a global charitable foundation, both politically and financially independent. We support scientists and researchers take ...

    Authors: Sarah Molton
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:8