Protecting children's health through forecast based anticipatory action (PROCHAIN)

通过基于预测的预期行动保护儿童健康 (PROCHAIN)

• 批准号: NE/Y005112/1
• 负责人: Dominic Kniveton
• 金额: $ 29.38万
• 依托单位: University of Sussex
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FY005112%2F1
• 关键词: Protecting; children; health; through; forecast

Ninety eight percent of child deaths occur in poor country contexts. The leading cause of these deaths are neonatal disorders (i.e. happening to the newborn, or within the first 28 days of their life). These deaths are mainly associated with premature birth (neonatal preterm birth), problems during birth (neonatal encephalopathy due to birth asphyxia and trauma), and infections and disease at and around birth (e.g. neonatal sepsis and hemolytic disease). Children in these contexts also risk death from lower respiratory infections, diarrhoeal diseases, congenital birth defects, malaria and malnutrition. The risk of a child dying of these causes is increased by high impact weather events, in a variety of ways, including interrupting health service provision, increasing the vulnerability of children and increasing the prevalence of disease vectors. However many of these deaths are preventable. Weather and climate-based forecasts allow actions to be taken ahead of time, that reduce health risks to children. These anticipatory acts can take many forms including mitigating any disruptions in basic childhood health services (e.g. vaccines, integrated management of childhood illness, well-child visits) that might occur during the high impact weather event, interventions to boost and protect household income and nutritional status before the event occurs (e.g. ensuring the supply of nutritional food) and the promotion of perinatal health (e.g. maternal and neonatal care). However, acting on forecasts is beset with problems. Foremost of these is that these forecasts are uncertain, produced as the probability of an extreme event (e.g. 50% probability of a heatwave). They are also not perfect e.g. sometimes they fail to predict a heatwave (or do so with a low probability when it should have been higher) and one occurs. Alternatively, they can predict a high impact weather event and it doesn't happen. Another problem is translating forecasts of high impact weather events into forecasts of their impacts on children's health. These characteristics present difficulties to decision-makers knowing when to act and when to not. NERC funded research by the fellow has both helped developed impact-based forecasts and facilitated the use of forecasts. An important part of this work has been working with the people who have to make decisions on how to make them with this type of information and does so in a way that fits with their resources and responsibilities. In this fellowship the fellow will work with Save the Children fund to help make sure that forecasts are routinely used in their work. In particular, this will involve understanding how high impact weather effects the health of children in the Sahel (where high impact weather events are frequent) and facilitating protocols and procedures that can be implemented to reduce these impacts. Ultimately the project aims to help increase the number of children's lives saved and supported by extending the time frame over which preventative actions can be taken. This extension of lead time is important to allow actions to be taken that reduce the risk of death and the costs of doing so, so that more children can be supported. Save the Children fund current works in over 100 countries, and has been in existence for a century. It has a worldwide staff of around 24,000 and in 2021 alone reached 26.5 million children through its health and nutrition programmes.

98%的儿童死亡发生在贫穷国家。这些死亡的主要原因是新生儿疾病（即发生在新生儿身上或出生后28天内）。这些死亡主要与早产（新生儿早产）、出生期间的问题（由于出生窒息和创伤引起的新生儿脑病）以及出生时和出生前后的感染和疾病（例如新生儿败血症和溶血性疾病）有关。在这种情况下，儿童还可能死于下呼吸道感染、腹泻、先天性出生缺陷、疟疾和营养不良。高影响力的天气事件以各种方式增加了儿童死于这些原因的风险，包括中断保健服务的提供、增加儿童的脆弱性和增加病媒的流行。然而，其中许多死亡是可以预防的。基于天气和气候的预报使人们能够提前采取行动，减少儿童的健康风险。这些预防性行动可以采取多种形式，包括减少基本儿童保健服务的中断（例如疫苗、儿童疾病综合管理、健康儿童探访），在事件发生前采取干预措施，提高和保护家庭收入和营养状况（如确保营养食品的供应）和促进围产期保健（如产妇和新生儿护理）。然而，根据预测采取行动存在诸多问题。其中最重要的是，这些预测是不确定的，作为极端事件的概率（例如，热浪的50%概率）。它们也不是完美的，例如，有时它们无法预测热浪（或者在应该更高的时候以低概率这样做），并且发生了一次。或者，他们可以预测一个高影响的天气事件，它不会发生。另一个问题是将高影响天气事件的预报转化为对儿童健康影响的预报。这些特点使决策者难以知道何时采取行动，何时不采取行动。NERC资助的研究既帮助开发了基于影响的预测，也促进了预测的使用。这项工作的一个重要部分是与那些必须就如何利用这类信息做出决定的人合作，并以符合他们资源和责任的方式这样做。在这个奖学金的研究员将与拯救儿童基金会，以帮助确保预测是在他们的工作中经常使用。特别是，这将涉及了解高影响天气如何影响萨赫勒地区儿童的健康（那里经常发生高影响天气事件），并促进可以实施的协议和程序，以减少这些影响。该项目的最终目标是通过延长采取预防行动的时间框架，帮助增加被拯救和得到支助的儿童的数量。这一准备时间的延长对于采取行动减少死亡风险和降低成本非常重要，从而能够支持更多的儿童。拯救儿童基金会目前在100多个国家开展工作，已经存在了世纪。它在全球拥有约24，000名员工，仅在2021年就通过其健康和营养计划惠及2650万儿童。