The uses of social and environmental health indicators in monitoring the effects of climate change

This paper argues that information collected in the field of Public Health has the potential to provide a valuable contribution to the forecasting and evaluation of the impact of climate change. The well-developed sets of social and environmental health data collected to monitor the health of human populations could also offer sensitive indicators of the effects and potential effects of climate change. City collections of public health data and general demographic information are reviewed as examples of the availability of such monitoring systems.The interests of those monitoring climate change and those monitoring health march together in other ways as well. Changes in radiation, rainfall and temperature will change food and building safety levels, as well as waste disposal capacity. People who are on the poverty line or ill, or both, have little opportunity to respond to such changes, or the strategies designed to control them. Since the Canadian Lalonde Report of 1974, health services have increasingly linked their social and physical health information to environmental data. Coordinated planning using a multidisciplinary data base and responses to change which give due regard to equity are both central considerations in responding to changes in the environment as well as to risks to human health.