Climate Change and Health: Harnessing Population Health Data and Technology for a Resilient Future
On February 24, 2025, a research seminar entitled “Climate Change and Health: Harnessing Population Health Data and Technology for a Resilient Future”, brought together two experts from the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Heidelberg University Germany to share their cutting-edge research on the intersection of climate change and health. The speakers, Prof. Dr. Rainer Sauerborn and Dr Sandra Barteit, discussed the big gap in climate change and health research, challenges, and innovative solutions, shedding light on the global impact of environmental changes on public health. The event, organised by South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO) and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at Monash University Malaysia, attracted over 70 international both in-person and online participants from countries including Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Pakistan, Germany, the UK, and more. The research seminar is part of the experts’ visit to Monash University Malaysia and the SEACO study site, where the Wellcome-funded Heat Adaptation Through Community-based Approaches and Research (Heat Care) project, led by Prof. Dr. Tin Tin Su, is currently being conducted.
Session 1: Climate Change and Health: How to Fill the Research Gap with Population Cohorts by Prof. Dr. Rainer Sauerborn, Senior Professor of Climate Change and Health, HIGH
Prof. Sauerborn highlighted the significant gap in empirical evidence on population-based climate change research, particularly between the Global North and South. The Global South is disproportionately affected by climate-related health impacts and has limited capacity to adapt. Communicable diseases remain a major concern in low-resource countries, posing pandemic risks, while climate-sensitive diseases are becoming increasingly prominent worldwide.
To address these challenges, health systems need to regularly collect data on illnesses and deaths. However, relying solely on mortality data is inadequate, as it fails to capture the full effects of diseases. Using metrics like disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), including years lived with disability (YLD) and years of life lost (YLL), allows for the calculation of climate DALYs (cDALYs) to measure the health impacts of climate change.
Prof. Sauerborn also emphasized the barriers in current climate change and health research. There are over 120 climate-sensitive diseases, with an example showing that about 33% of climate-sensitive causes of death were identified in the data from the Nouna HDSS in Burkina Faso. This highlights the high burden of climate-sensitive diseases in the population. Climate-related extreme heat exposure can directly impact health, including heat-related illnesses, mental health issues, and reduced work productivity. Other indirect impacts, such as the link between climate-related food insecurity and mortality, have also been established. For example, weather-related crop failures could double all-cause mortality in children under five with 1.5°C of warming by 2100. Prof. Sauerborn also highlighted the pressing need to quantify and attribute the additional disease burden from climate change on health. However, there is a lack of population-based data, as climate and health data are often collected in silos, with only a few intervention studies conducted to protect populations from climate-related health impacts.
Prof. Sauerborn stressed the importance of effectively measuring health and climate variables at the population level. Therefore, upscaling existing Health & Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS) to make them climate-ready is crucial. There are currently 60 HDSS sites in Africa and Asia, with three already implementing the Climate Change and Health Evaluation and Response System (CHEERS) framework, and two more preparing to do so. CHEERS offers an innovative approach to expand existing HDSSs, generating crucial climate change and health-related data. The first session concluded on the potential role of CHEERS to significantly advance climate change and health research in LMICs, and informing evidence-based interventions and policies.
Session 2: Leveraging Sensor-Based Technologies to Address Climate by Dr Sandra Barteit, Research Group Leader in Digital Global Health, HIGH
Dr. Barteit began Session 2 by highlighting the profound impacts of climate change on population health, which disproportionately affect vulnerable populations in the Global South. Climate change exacerbates almost two-thirds of pathogenic diseases affecting humans and contributes significantly to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Environmental factors play a crucial role in cardiovascular disease, offering opportunities to reduce risk by modifying these factors.
Wearable devices are a promising tool for continuous monitoring of environmental hazards and health outcomes. They have been successfully used in large-scale research to measure the health implications of climate change-related weather extremes. However, to date, there is still limited research on wearable devices in low-income countries and among vulnerable populations with pre-existing conditions.
Dr. Barteit shared the applications of sensor-based technologies in health monitoring, such as using wearable data to improve real-time surveillance of influenza-like illnesses or assessing the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on health and wellbeing. She also discussed her ongoing work on climate-related health impacts on malaria in Kenya, where Bayesian algorithms applied to wearable data provide early malaria infection detection, enhancing intervention strategies. These findings support scalable interventions, such as early warning systems and tailored health responses, to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on health outcomes.
Dr. Barteit also presented the CHEERS framework, which integrates sensor-based technologies for continuous measurement of climate-relevant health and meteorological variables in diverse HDSS cohorts across Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Utilizing wearable devices, 3D-printed weather stations, and satellite data, CHEERS-HDSS will be able to capture comprehensive environmental and health metrics. She also shared some of recent findings from Burkina Faso whereby the study participants reported reduced activity levels and disrupted sleep patterns during extreme heat, emphasizing the physiological toll of climate-related heat stress. In another study, a satellite-based yield model in Burkina Faso further links climate-driven crop failures to increased malnutrition and disease susceptibility. This research underscores the feasibility and acceptability of individual-level sensor data in low-resource settings, combined with household or community levels data, offering actionable insights into the health impacts of climate change.
Closing remark
The discussions throughout the seminar reinforced the urgency of leveraging population health data, digital tools, and interdisciplinary approaches to build climate-resilient communities. Let’s continue these important conversations and foster collaboration to advance research and turn knowledge into action for global health and climate resilience.