Review of the Draft Interagency Report on the Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States (2015) / Chapter Skim
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Answers to the Statement of Task Questions
Answers to the Statement of Task Questions
Pages 5-10
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From page 5... ...
The Committee has a primary concern with the authors' selection of which aspects of potential climate change impacts on human health are included in the Draft Assessment. The process of selecting the specific health outcomes and case studies that were included in each chapter (for example, Lyme disease and West Nile virus in Chapter 4 and non-cholera Vibrios and toxic algae in Chapter 5)
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From page 6... ...
Although the Draft Assessment is clearly not intended to make policy recommendations for adaptation, it is designed to provide stakeholders with "updated information on the observed and projected impacts of climate change on human health and changes in risk to health" that "may help inform adaptation decisions in the public health arena" (79 FR 7419 [February 7, 2014]
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From page 7... ...
In addition, even though it is referenced in Chapter 1 as providing additional detail on the approaches used, the Technical Support Document provides only a general discussion of the sources of uncertainty without any additional details on how specifically that uncertainty should be applied to reaching likelihood and confidence judgments. Nor are there references to similar approaches that have been used in other settings to provide insight into the approaches used here.
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From page 8... ...
Given that many aspects of health and climate change can overlap, a clear early description of what is in each chapter would be advantageous to the reader. While the Committee understands the challenges of inevitable overlap and has made its chapter-specific comments below in the order that they appeared in the Draft Assessment, the Committee encourages the authors to consider a revised ordering of chapters to enhance linkages, where possible, between related issues: Temperature-Related Death and Illness; Extreme Weather; Air Quality Impacts; Vectorborne Diseases; Water-Related Illnesses; Food Safety, Nutrition, and Distribution; Mental Health and Well-Being; and Climate-Health Risk Factors and Populations of Concern (potentially renamed simply "Populations of Concern" as noted below)
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From page 9... ...
first wherever possible. Also, the Executive Summary opening pages could be enhanced by adding highlighted summary bullets of the major health impacts for which there is the highest likelihood and/or highest confidence, of both current and future effects.
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From page 10... ...
Development of the report will leverage existing activities of the CCHHG and INCA members, aggregate and assess current quantitative research on human health impacts of climate change, and summarize the current state of the science…using modeling and analysis tools to quantify, where possible, projected national-scale impacts of climate change to human health. Such analyses will attempt to identify and bound impact uncertainties, as well as better define changes in attributable epidemiological risks, particularly for vulnerable populations, with the goal of informing public health authorities and other public planning and resource management entities." The authors have evaluated a wide range of literature and commissioned and/or taken advantage of significant new quantitative efforts to estimate the likely future impact of climate change on both environmental stressors and human health.
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