Climate change and health research: Current trends, gaps and perspectives for the future

Overview

The World Health Organization (WHO), in close collaboration with the Research Subcommittee of the WHO-Civil Society Working Group to Advance Action on Climate and Health, attempted to map out the trends and gaps in current research on climate and health over the past decade by implementing a comprehensive review of existing literature in this area. This exercise provided an overview of the current state of knowledge on climate and health, as well as geographic distribution of the studies, and outlined the new emerging fields of research.

This report also presents recommendations for future research, with the aim of improving the evidence base for policies to protect health from climate change. It serves as an update of the WHO publication “Protecting health from climate change: global research priorities” released in 2009.