Panel Paper:
Climate Change and Child Health Inequality: A Review of Reviews
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Webinar Room 3 (Online Zoom Webinar)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
There is growing evidence on the observed and expected negative consequences of climate change on population health worldwide. There is limited understanding of its consequences for health inequalities and for children. The International Network for Research on Inequalities in Child Health (INRICH) sought to examine if the consequences of climate change increase inequality in child health. As this is a relatively new area of research due to data limitations and differing manifestations of climate change by world region, we conducted a “review of reviews” to determine the state of knowledge in this area. In partnership with the Karolinska Institute, we led a review of peer-reviewed systematic and narrative reviews indexed in five databases (Medline, Embase, Web of Science, PsycInfo, Sociological Abstracts). Our inclusion criteria were reviews that reported the effect of climate change and its consequences on one or more health outcomes in different social groups, were conducted in high or low/middle income countries and addressed the health of children and young people less than 18 years old. Our search strategy retrieved 449 reviews after deduplication; title and abstract evaluations rendered 90 reviews for full-text analyses, with publication years ranging from 1985 to 2020. Our results will inform policymakers on “new” root causes of child health inequalities as they relate to climate change.
