Developing climate cohorts to understand health associations and resilience and susceptibility factors in Ghana

项目摘要 过去半个世纪取得的全球健康成果面临着被气候变化侵蚀的风险， 低收入和中等收入国家（LMICs）受到严重影响。在中低收入国家，科学和政策规划 将气候兼容战略纳入卫生部门等气候敏感领域的能力， 由于缺乏来自其国家的当地气候敏感性的经验性估计， 对政策至关重要的是，了解特定人群的复原力和敏感性因素。的确， 最近的气候敏感性依赖于LMIC的数据，这些数据具有大规模的行政数据（巴西，中国）， 代表非洲大陆。尽管存在这一重大限制，但这些数据表明， 在没有可用数据的地区，易感群体的死亡率将高出约50%，例如 非洲我们建议通过指导研究和开发 两组强化的“气候群组”。我们将充分利用现有的加纳随机化 空气污染与健康研究，以检查气候暴露对母婴健康之间的关联。 我们还将开始与金丹波卫生和人口监测系统合作， 未来的气候工作利用这一丰富的数据资源。这项工作将开始完善气候健康的敏感性 估计，提供对复原力和敏感性因素的关键见解，并填补迫切需要的政策和 与实践相关的证据缺口。该项目的一个长期目标是提供一个框架， 加纳的气候科学和其他具有类似现存队列的非洲国家的模式， 促进非洲大陆的气候研究。

Project summary Global health gains achieved over the past half century are at risk of being eroded by climate change, which disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In LMICs, scientific and policy planning capacity to incorporate climate compatible strategies into climate sensitive areas like the health sector is severely hampered by the lack of empirically derived estimates of local climate sensitivities from their countries and, critical for policy, an understanding of population-specific resilience and susceptibility factors. Indeed, recent climate sensitivities relied on data from LMICs with large scale administrative data (Brazil, China) as a proxy for the African continent. Despite this major limitation, these data suggest that the effect of temperature on mortality in susceptible groups will be ~50% larger in regions for which there is no available data, such as Africa. We propose to build climate science expertise in Ghana by mentored research and the development of two reinforcing sets of “climate cohorts.” We will leverage the well-characterized, extant Ghana Randomized Air Pollution and Health Study to examine associations between climatic exposures on maternal-child health. We will also begin work with the Kintampo Health and Demographic Surveillance System (KHDSS) to prepare for future climate work leveraging this rich data resource. This work will begin to refine climate health sensitivity estimates, provide key insights into resilience and susceptibility factors, and fill urgently-needed policy and practice-relevant evidence gaps. A long-term goal of this project is to provide a framework for continued climate science in Ghana and a model for other African countries with similar extant cohorts, to collectively catalyze climate research on the African continent.