The Australian Living Evidence Collaboration (ALEC) has received a two year grant from the Walter Thomas Cottman Charitable Trust and the Phyllis Connor Memorial Trust, managed by Equity Trustees, to begin addressing the links between climate change and the health of Australian communities through a new ALEC Climate Health initiative.
Locally and globally, climate health is a compelling and unifying focus for governments, health organisations, clinicians and communities.
The impacts of climate change on the health of Australian communities and the resilience and resources of the health sector are many, including increased deaths and harm from increasing heat, extreme weather events, declining air quality, the spread of vector-borne diseases, food and water insecurity, and greater tolls on mental health.
Further, the health sector itself impacts the climate crisis, contributing a colossal seven per cent to Australia’s overall carbon footprint.
Contributing to the project is Professor Karin Leder, an infectious diseases clinician, epidemiologist and public health researcher, who leads Monash University’s Health and Climate initiative.
“Taking action to address the impact of climate on health is urgent. Decision makers in health care and policy deserve reliable evidence to inform their decision making, and community members require evidence to support their healthcare needs,” Prof Leder said.
The ALEC Climate Health initiative will map the landscape of priorities and research evidence in this fast-moving field, deliver urgent evidence to answer high priority questions about climate and health in Australia, and establish the working infrastructure to continue to provide reliable, up to date evidence to inform decision making into the future.
ALEC Senior Research Fellow Dr Miranda Cumpston said, “ALEC’s living evidence model allows us to deliver up to date, reliable evidence synthesis to inform health care and policy in an area of vital importance to Australians, where the research is evolving quickly.”
Comprising a network of 64 peak health bodies, ALEC will convene a multidisciplinary collaboration involving leading climate health researchers, consumers, clinicians, health professional organisations, health service managers and evidence synthesis methodologists.
“ALEC’s infrastructure, processes, and cross-disciplinary, collaborative model makes us ideally placed to answer the questions that matter around the critical challenge of climate and health. This is the same approach that enabled us to deliver the trusted evidence Australians urgently needed over four years of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Dr Cumpston said.
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