Motivators and Barriers to Incorporating Climate Change-Related Health Risks in Environmental Health Impact Assessment

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
File version
Author(s)
Turner, Lyle R
Alderman, Katarzyna
Connell, Des
Tong, Shilu
Griffith University Author(s)
Primary Supervisor
Other Supervisors
Editor(s)
Date
2013
Size

182063 bytes

File type(s)

application/pdf

Location
Abstract

Climate change presents risks to health that must be addressed by both decision-makers and public health researchers. Within the application of Environmental Health Impact Assessment (EHIA), there have been few attempts to incorporate climate change-related health risks as an input to the framework. This study used a focus group design to examine the perceptions of government, industry and academic specialists about the suitability of assessing the health consequences of climate change within an EHIA framework. Practitioners expressed concern over a number of factors relating to the current EHIA methodology and the inclusion of climate change-related health risks. These concerns related to the broad scope of issues that would need to be considered, problems with identifying appropriate health indicators, the lack of relevant qualitative information that is currently incorporated in assessment and persistent issues surrounding stakeholder participation. It was suggested that improvements are needed in data collection processes, particularly in terms of adequate communication between environmental and health practitioners. Concerns were raised surrounding data privacy and usage, and how these could impact on the assessment process. These findings may provide guidance for government and industry bodies to improve the assessment of climate change-related health risks.

Journal Title

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Conference Title
Book Title
Edition
Volume

10

Issue

3

Thesis Type
Degree Program
School
Publisher link
Patent number
Funder(s)
Grant identifier(s)
Rights Statement
Rights Statement

© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, author. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Item Access Status
Note
Access the data
Related item(s)
Subject

Other environmental sciences not elsewhere classified

Persistent link to this record
Citation
Collections