Research priorities for addressing climate change and human health and nutrition gaps

Climate change poses significant threats to global health, with its effects disproportionately impacting low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While there is a growing emphasis on producing evidence to understand the relationship between climate change and health, there remains a dearth of evidence for LMICs. We aimed to summarize current evidence on the health impacts of climate change, map mitigation and adaptation projections/modeling strategies, and summarize the impact of interventions within LMICs aimed at addressing health impacts of climate change. We utilized the Evidence Gap Map (EGM) methodology to conduct a scoping review of existing literature pertaining to climate-related hazards, health outcomes, and LMICs. We identified 112 eligible reviews, and these were extracted by two independent reviewers. We then identified reviews containing over 50% of the studies from LMICs reporting on climate hazard and health outcome and extracted all primary studies from LMICs. We analyzed the evidence by generating heat maps to visualize the evidence highlighting associations between each climate hazard and health outcome and created gap maps to analyze the type of association between climate hazards and health outcomes. Additionally, we also identified and summarized the adaptation and mitigation projections/modeling strategies and interventions specific to LMICs.

The findings highlight extreme heat and infectious diseases as the most frequently studied climate hazard and health outcome, while dust storms and heat-related illnesses emerge as under-studied areas requiring further investigation. Extreme heat emerges as a significant driver of adverse health effects, including mortality, heat-related illnesses, chronic/non-communicable diseases, and mental health outcomes. Mean temperature changes exhibit mixed associations across health domains, including mortality and infectious diseases. Altered rainfall patterns show notable positive associations with infectious diseases. Droughts are linked to nutritional outcomes, highlighting implications for food security. Outdoor air pollution, including particulate matter and emissions, demonstrates positive associations with various health outcomes. While numerous adaptation and mitigation strategies were proposed in existing literature and the findings highlight a dearth of interventions evaluated specifically for LMICs.

While there is a growing body of evidence highlighting the associations between climate change and adverse health impacts, particularly in LMICs, it is crucial to refocus our attention on developing and delivering context-specific interventions that could potentially mitigate these adverse outcomes.