This half-day event was jointly hosted by the Infection and Immunity Research Network (I&I) and the Climate Change and Health Research Group (CCH), an initiative between the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research (EBI) and the Cabot Institute for the Environment at the University of Bristol.
This multi- and interdisciplinary event welcomed eleven invited oral speakers and five poster presenters all exploring the different facets of how human and animal health are affected by climate change. Topics covered included: nutrition, environmental pollution, insect and parasite-borne infectious diseases, engineering interventions to cope with the effects of climate change, human and animal mental health, changes in human and animal behaviours due to climate change (and how these can lead to greater infection numbers, for example), how world trade policy adapts to circumstances in order to meet needs, and how a One Health approach can influence public policy and the actions of individuals for positive change.
Summary of the day
The event was launched by Nina Ockendon-Powell, Manager of CONNECTED, a community network for vector-borne plant viruses whose memberships extends to over 1600 people across 93 countries. Entitled Plant health in a changing climate: The importance of understanding vector-borne plant viruses of nutritious crops, her talk explained how climate change, alongside globalisation and agricultural expansion, intensification and extensification are driving greater diversity, severity and distributions of plant viral diseases. These factors are altering the population dynamics of important insect vectors such as aphids and whiteflies, which are both global pests which spread a multitude of plant viruses; and their numbers and distributions are increasing, thus directly impacting on food systems and nutrition.
Charlotte Lloyd is a geographer/chemist looking at the origins and fate of human and agricultural wastes, particularly in relation to their delivery from land to water bodies. Her talk, Climate change impacts on chemicals in the environment: implications for water quality and human health, demonstrated that climate change acts to stimulate and exacerbate chemical pollution in the environment, including additives from plastics and the emergence of heavy metals due to decreasing water levels.
Our first external speaker was Alexander Vaux, Principal Medical Entomologist with the UK Health Security Agency. Alex looks at tick and mosquito (vector) populations, which carry and transmit infectious diseases, and advises the government on public health risks posed by their increasing numbers and distribution due to climate change. The team conduct risk assessments and vector surveillance, a necessity in view of rising cases of, for example, Zika, Dengue, Malaria, Arbovirus and Chikungunya across Europe. They identify the vectors involved and test them to see which virus(es) they carry, monitor distribution and abundance of key vectors, and maintain a nationwide network of traps for UK species.
How will climate change affect engineering interventions for environmental public health? Was delivered by Guy Howard, engineer and Director of the Cabot Institute for the Environment. Guy detailed how public health engineering is critical in managing population-level exposures to climate change such as flooding, drought, heat, wind, wildfires, sea-level rises and glacier retreats. Domestic water supply, sanitation and wastewater management, solid waste management, drainage and health care facilities all contribute significantly to maintaining good levels of public health. Investing in resilience, i.e. emergency responses, needs to be integrated into the planning and management of systems. Designing these responses can only be achieved through a better understanding of climate risk narratives in collaboration with experts in public health (such as disease modellers or economists).
Jessica Newberry Le Vay was our second external speaker. Based at Imperial College London, Jessica is part of Climate Cares, a joint initiative between Imperial's Institute of Global Health Innovation and the Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment, which aims to understand and support mental health and wellbeing in the climate crisis. Her talk, The unappreciated links between climate change and mental health, and how to act on them, presented on how challenges affecting our planet also affect our minds, communities and healthcare systems. Their vision is to provide the knowledge, tools and resources to become resilient to the mental health impacts of climate change. Factors such as loss and damage of homes and property, crop and livestock damage, changes to livelihood and infrastructure disruptions and the subsequent effect of these scenarios, all contribute to deteriorating mental health. Need numbers to support this? It is estimated that by 2050 there will be an estimated 22,000 extra suicides in the USA and Mexico alone due to higher temperatures.
Health Economic Modeller Josephine Walker spoke on Climate and parasites: Ecology and environmental drivers of parasite transmission. Using Fasciola (liver fluke) and Haemonchus contortus (barber’s pole worm, causes anaemia, oedema and death in infected sheep and goats) as examples, Josephine explained how changes in habitat due to climate change are affecting the spread of water-associated diseases spread by these parasites. Modelling disease transmission in space and time can help predict the effects of a disease on a population and identify alternative management strategy outcomes.
Session 1 was rounded off by Adam Trickey with his talk on Investigating the associations between drought, poverty, high-risk sexual behaviours, and HIV incidence in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): a cross-sectional study. His research aimed to investigate a potential pathway by which drought may affect HIV transmission, and to examine associations between drought and poverty; poverty and sexual behaviours; sexual behaviours and HIV incidence; and drought and HIV incidence. SSA contains 67% of the world’s HIV burden, equal to an estimated 25.6 million people, with 860,000 new HIV infections annually. Extreme weather events can increase poverty and food insecurity, which exacerbates the structural problems underlying HIV transmission, particularly among women in rural areas where subsistence farming is common. Poverty and food insecurity can drive changes in sexual behaviours, such as increased transactional sex, with increased risk of condomless sex with non-permanent partners.
Fay Clark is a comparative experimental psychologist whose work looks for connections between animal cognition, behaviour, affective state and environment. How do animals cope with human-induced rapid environmental change? looked at how human-induced rapid environmental change often puts organisms into evolutionarily novel conditions that involve more rapid change than in the past. Animals become trapped by their adaptations and are unable to cope, leading them to make poor choices. From turtles mistaking plastic bags for jelly fish to altered behaviour of reef fish due to higher dissolved levels of carbon dioxide in oceans, the consequences are dire - a large proportion of Earth’s species are expected to go extinct in the next 50-100 years. Those who are able to adapt faster have a better chance of survival.
Alex Tasker presented on The unknown and the unseen: complexity, climate, and health. In a rapidly changing world, geographical changes are bringing about forced adaptations. Changes in the environment across the globe are pushing communities into a state of “climate vulnerability”, meaning that loss of food security, increased risk of disease, lost access to infrastructure including healthcare, and forced changes in livelihood are placing populations in a state of disorder. This, in turn, leaves them vulnerable to political manoeuvring which might not be in their best interests. There are networks doing exemplary work to mitigate this vulnerability.
Expert in international trade law Greg Messenger spoke on The World Trade Regime: Learning from the Pandemic to Better Manage the Climate Crisis? The COVID-19 pandemic affected trade quite significantly; the agricultural industry, for example, suffered from a loss of migrant labour and transport options, and export restraints; on the flip side, there were tariff reductions, a relaxation of regulatory checks, and improved facilitation. During the pandemic the World Trade Organization (WTO) provided valuable monitoring and analysis services. Ongoing work on issues such as export restrictions, food security, intellectual property, services, tariff classification, technology transfer and trade facilitation have provided a framework that can be extended across the membership to address the climate crisis. Transparency; co-ordination; resourcing (in terms of rapid-response and implementation funds) and economic diplomacy all have an essential role in combating these challenges.
Finally, Emil Sorensen spoke on Later-life consequences of early-life air pollution: The London smog and the Clean Air Act 1956. Air pollution is both a contributor to and a consequence of climate change. Contemporaneous data shows that exposure to air pollution affects individuals’ human capital and growth. Emil is looking at very long-term effects of early life pollution exposure with survivors of the London smog event of 1952, the consequences of which were severe enough to act as a major driver of the Clean Air Act of 1956. Using data from the UK Biobank, they compared changes in outcomes of individuals born in the London area before and after the smog and found a significant reduction in fluid intelligence score and an increase in risk of hospitalisation with lung diseases from those exposed at a young age. Data of long-term effects of those born within and outwith Smoke Control Areas created as a result of the Clean Air Act are currently under review.
The oral programme was complemented by five poster presentations delivered by:
- Joshua Howkins (Academic Clinical Fellow and Public Health Registrar, UK Health Security Agency): Mapping vulnerability to climate-related hazards to facilitate Local Authority adaptation and building resilience
- Cara Patel (PhD student in Antimicrobial Resistance, Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter): Using Mesocosms to Study the Effects of Global Warming on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)
- Jianghan Tian (PhD student, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol): The microphysics of exhaled aerosols and airborne disease transmission
- Thomas Timberlake (Research Associate, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol): The pollination of Nepal's micronutrient-rich crops in a changing climate
- Enrico Werner (Research Associate, Department of Engineering Mathematics, University of Bristol): Harnessing Environmental Measurements For Improved Patient Health Forecasting