Published Research on the Human Health Implications of Climate Change from 2012-2019: a Cross-Sectional Study

ImportanceClimate change is one of the most pressing global public health issues and is increasingly gaining attention from governments and researchers as a critical policy and research focus. While research on the effects of climate change on human health has grown significantly over the past few decades, there remain known gaps in research on non-physical health topics, like mental health, and in research on low-income countries. ObjectiveTo better understand the current state of research on the human health effects of climate change, including exposures, health conditions, populations, areas of the world studied, funding sources, and publication characteristics, with a focus on topics that are relevant for vulnerable populations. Evidence ReviewWe searched the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Climate Change and Human Health Literature Portal, a curated bibliographic database of global peer-reviewed research and gray literature on the science of climate impact on human health, to identify peer-reviewed original research investigating the health effects of climate change published from 2012 to 2019. The database combines searches of multiple search engines including PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar and includes added-value expert tagging of climate change exposures and health impacts. We filtered our search by year published, limited to original research articles published in English. After identifying all original research articles, we selected a 5% random sample to manually perform a detailed characterization of research topics and publication information. FindingsThere were 7082 original research articles published between 2012 and 2019, and the number of articles increased by 23% annually. In our random sample of 348 articles, we found that there were several gaps in research topics that are particularly relevant to vulnerable populations, such as those in the Global South (159; 45.7%) and the elderly (55; 15.8%). Additionally, fewer first authors were from the Global South (110; 31.6%), which may in part explain why there is disproportionally less research focusing on these countries. Conclusions and RelevanceOur results help elucidate gaps in research that, once addressed, may help us better understand and mitigate some of the most devastating effects of climate change on human health.