Overview
The World Health Organisation has declared climate change as the single biggest health threat facing humanity, with the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Science Report concluding:
“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”1
Welsh Government has responded to the climate crisis with several key policies, including Net Zero Wales (2021-2025) and the Well-being of Future Generations (2015) Act, aimed at building a ‘stronger, greener, fairer’ Wales over the coming decades. Climate policies to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels may pose risks to certain sectors, but also offer an opportunity to advance policies that can transform society for the better. It is crucial over the next ‘decade of action’, Welsh Government has access to high quality data and evidence that can effectively identify and evaluate these transition risks and opportunities, and ensure funding is prioritised towards the most cost-effective climate solutions.
Our theme will work with Welsh Government and other stakeholders to identify priority areas and harness the potential of de-identified administrative data within SAIL; to generate evidence that can inform policy and help Wales achieve a fair and inclusive transition to net zero, where all of society and nature thrive.
Our research programme will focus on three pressing issues in Wales: health impacts of extreme weather events; climate change transition risks and opportunities; and associations between biodiversity, ecosystem resilience and health.
The Climate Change research theme is led by Co-Academic Leads, Rich Fry and Lucy Griffiths.
1 IPCC, 2022: Summary for Policymakers. 2022.
Priorities
Our research programme will focus on three pressing issues in Wales: health impacts of extreme weather events; climate change transition risks and opportunities; and associations between biodiversity, ecosystem resilience and health.
We will look at the socio-demographic and health characteristics of people living in high-risk flood areas, and how population composition has changed with time. We will also explore the short and long-term health and well-being risks associated with extreme weather in Wales, and the possibility of modelling these findings to inform future policy development.
We will help Welsh Government to monitor the transition risks and opportunities that may ensue from policies designed to decarbonise Wales. We will specifically focus on sustainable travel and green infrastructure and explore the ability to: evaluate the introduction of 20mph legislation in Wales; define and identify 20-minute neighbourhoods and associated socio-demographic and health characteristics; measure the ‘potential’ for active & sustainable travel in communities across Wales; and investigate associations between health and green infrastructure initiatives.
We have also identified several sources of ecosystem resilience/biodiversity data in Wales that could be linked to SAIL data to investigate: the socio-demographic characteristics of people living in the most/least biodiverse/ecosystem resilient areas in Wales; the new ‘biodiversity hypothesis’ and whether growing up in biodiverse environments reduces risk of allergies, asthma and other chronic inflammatory diseases.
Projects
Increasing temperatures and the impact on population health
This project will look at how variability and extremes in temperature impact population health. By linking Met Office temperature data to health and administrative data, the team will explore the impacts of temperature variability and extremes on cardiovascular and respiratory conditions in the young and older populations.
The impacts of elevated temperatures on maternal, foetal and neonatal health outcomes in Wales
This project will look at how elevated temperatures impact maternal, foetal and neonatal health outcomes in Wales. It will investigate how socio-demographic, housing qualities, and other environmental factors affect these outcomes. Through the study of lab based bio markers, the research team will look at how heat stress impacts placental health.
Active travel among school aged children in Wales
In collaboration with Public Health Wales, this project will look at what proportion of school aged children in Wales have the ‘potential’ to travel actively to school and how this compares to self-reported rates. Looking at the National Survey for Wales (NSW) and School Health Research Network (SHRN), the research team will define walkable and cyclable distances. Future work will include environment characteristics such as traffic, the built environment and safety to develop a more realistic picture of walkability.
Enhancing understanding of populations inequalities in Wales
This work will use existing and new health, demographic and administrative data to characterise the population of Wales into socio-economic, marginalised and vulnerable groups of individuals to aid future understanding of population inequalities in Wales.