Climate Change and Health Research: Time for Teamwork

doi:10.1289/ehp.12150 Commitments to address climate change, including those aimed at reducing greenhouse gases by 2050, are increasing. As efforts toward mitigation of climate change gather momentum, there is an increased need to understand the linkages between climate change and human health and the potential health consequences of mitigation strategies. Although there is substantial knowledge of how climate change can affect human health, there is much the scientific community does not know or understand. McMichael et al. (2004) calculated that approximately 166,000 deaths per year and 5.5 million disability adjusted life years (a measure of healthy life years lost) resulted from climate change in the year 2000. These figures underestimate the scope of the problem for three reasons: a) They are based on only a few health end points for which global data are readily available; b) they do not fully capture the rang