Towards a Resilient Planet - Through Public Health

The public health field is growingly being recognized in climate change policy. In this article, Drishya Pathak, Komal Mittal, and Philo Magdalene A, say that there is a need for developing interdisciplinary public health frameworks to reduce the vulnerabilities to climate change. A welldefined public health framework would redress the social and environmental determinants of health and allow offiials to build strategies and programmes to aid communities to acquire knowledge of climate resilience and prepare them for the health effects of climate change.

- Drishya Pathak, Komal Mittal, and Philo Magdalene A

Rapid, radical, and systemic changes in every field have been considered the need of the hour to address the code red for humanity: climate change. Such a response requires deliberate consideration with regard to reorganization of resources, funds, and priorities, without trade-offs in the incumbent areas of health, education, and other social measures. In this race against time, a pragmatic approach, especially for governments, would be to incorporate climate change response frameworks and strategies into existing systems and projects, rather than solely piloting new initiatives.

In this regard, the public healthcare system offers robust opportunities to incorporate climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. It already contains a framework, infrastructure, tools, and other essential resources that, if evolved to accommodate the climate change response framework, can economically scale up climate action efforts to pave the way for a resilient, sustainable, and equitable future.

Public Health: A Key Player

Advancing the existing public health system framework into an interdisciplinary climate-oriented one is crucial given the inherent linkages between climate and health. The latest “Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change” report declares a “code red for a healthy future” revealing an unabated increase in the health impacts of climate change and the current health consequences from “delayed and inconsistent response” of countries across the globe.1