Public-health officials are bracing for a slew of potential health problems associated with climate change. They fear that increasing temperatures, rising sea levels and hydrologic extremes could lead to more illnesses caused by severe heat, worsening air pollution, increasing allergies, serious water-borne diseases, disruptions in water and food supplies, and displacement of "environmental refugees." That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the public-health world already has devised a portfolio of successful strategies for meeting such challenges. These 10 essential functions of public health could provide a viable framework for mitigating the effects of climate change.

"At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the last year, we have actively engaged the topic of climate change," said Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC, who shared his views with leading scientists, scholars and policy makers at the National Summit on Coping with Climate Change at the University of Michigan on May 8.

"We think that most of what we need to do to respond to climate change can be met through these 10 traditional public-health functions. We are now developing an agency and a national plan that will enable us to address climate change on behalf of the nation and the world, and to protect health through what’s coming."

Frumkin emphasized the need to communicate the potential health impacts of climate change more effectively and to utilize "social marketing" messages to raise awareness and change behaviors.

He urged policy makers to "think globally, but cope locally" by scaling their adaptation solutions to the local and regional levels. Frumkin also stressed the importance of considering the disparate impact of climate change on economically and socially disadvantaged populations, both nationally and throughout the world.

Furthermore, he urged climate-change experts to continually assess the health impacts of proposed mitigation strategies in order to improve responses and to avoid inadvertent harmful consequences.

"There are many opportunities for beneficial synergies in the climate-change-mitigation world," Frumkin said. "We need to celebrate those as we move forward."

The National Summit on Coping with Climate Change, May 8-10, was hosted by the School of Natural Resources and Environment on behalf of the University of Michigan. The summit is part of the Clinton Global Initiative, a non-partisan catalyst for action, established by former President Bill Clinton and the William J. Clinton Foundation for the purpose of bringing together global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to pressing world challenges.

By Claudia Capos

For more information, contact Cynthia Shaw at

cshaw@umich.edu or call 734-763-6605.