As has often been noted, the four themes for InFocus at
Moravian are interconnected: Poverty,
Sustainability, Health Care, and War & Peace. Climate change is related to all four
areas. On Thursday, one of the themes of
the COP had to do with the health impacts of climate change, and on Friday
afternoon, the US Center hosted a panel on the topic.
The panel “Health Adaptation in the United States and Around
the World” was led by Dr. John Balbus, the Senior Advisor for Public Health at the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). A 2010 report thoroughly lists the many different impacts
on health from climate change, ranging from the direct impacts of weather
events (heat waves, storms, etc.) to biological agents (microbes, vector-borne
diseases, etc.). An overview of health concerns around the world can be found here.
Of interest to researchers, the Obama administration has
also made the online resource MATCH (Metadata Access Tool for Climate and
Health) publicly available. One of the goals of MATCH is to provide “relevant
Federal metadata on climate and health that will increase efficiency in solving
research problems.” Remembering that Dr. John
Snow (1813-1858) discovered that cholera was transmitted through water by using
a dot map showing clusters of cholera cases and overlapping that with maps of
the water supply system, it seems like there should
be possibilities for student research as we focus on Health this year!
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