Environmental Change, Climate and Health
Issues and Research Methods

Analysis of the impact of global environmental change on human health for researchers and graduate students.

P. Martens (Edited by), A. J. McMichael (Edited by)

9780521114028, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 18 June 2009

366 pages, 35 b/w illus. 1 colour illus. 16 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.54 kg

The advent of global environmental change, with all its uncertainties and requirement for long-term prediction, brings new challenges and tasks for scientists, the public and policy makers. A major environmental upheaval such as climate change is likely to have significant health effects. Current mainstream epidemiological research methods do not always adequately address the health impacts that arise within a context in which the ecological and other biophysical processes display non-linear and feedback-dependent relationships. The agenda of research and policy advice must be extended to include the larger-framed environmental change issues. This book identifies the nature and scope of the problem, and explores the conceptual and methodological approaches to studying these relationships, modelling their future realisation, providing estimates of health impacts, and communicating the attendant uncertainties. This timely volume will be of great interest to health scientists and graduate students with an interest in the effects of global environmental change.

1. Global environmental changes: anticipating and assessing risks to health A. J. McMichael and P. Martens
2. Historical connections between climate, medical thought and human health A. G. Carmichael and M. Fleming Moran
3. The contribution of global environmental factors to ill-health K. R. Smith and M. Desai
4. Surprise, nonlinearity and complex behavior T. Awerbuch, A. E. Kiszewski and R. Levins
5. Epidemilogic and impacts assessment methods K. L. Ebi and J. A. Patz
6. Retrospective studies: analogue approaches describing climate variability and health R. S. Kovats and M. Bouma
7. Detecting the infectious disease consequences of climate change and extreme weather events P. R. Epstein
8. Integrated assessment modelling of human health impacts P. Martens, J. Rotmans and D. Rothman
9. Remote sensing, GIS, and spatial statistics: powerful tools for landscape epidemiology L. R. Beck, U. Kitron and M. R. Bobo
10. Monitoring the health impacts of global climate change D. H. Campbell-Lendrum, P. Wilkinson, K. Kuhn, R. S. Kovats, A. Haines, B. Menne and T. W. Parr
11. Epidemiology, environmental health and global change A. Woodward
12. Dealing with scientific uncertainties T. O. Riordan and A. J. McMichael.

Subject Areas: Environmental science, engineering & technology [TQ], Meteorology & climatology [RBP], Environmental medicine [MMR], Environmental economics [KCN]