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I-CHEEAR- Illinois Climate, Health, and Environment: Evidence to Action and Resilience

Resources to support CIMED students and others considering the health effects of climate change.

NEJM & JAMA series on Climate Change

New England Journal of Medicine series: Fossil-Fuel Pollution and Climate Change

JAMA Climate Change and Health series

Wu Y, Wen B, Gasevic D, Patz JA, Haines A, Ebi KL, Murray V, Li S, Guo Y. Climate Change, Floods, and Human Health. N Engl J Med. 2024 Nov 21;391(20):1949-1958. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsr2402457. PMID: 39565995.

Additional resources

CDC. Climate effects on Health

Climate Central. Warming climate, more pollen, worse allergies

Commonwealth Fund. The Impact of Climate Change on our Health and Health Systems. 2022

EPA. Climate Change and Human Health

Esper J, Torbenson M, Büntgen U. 2023 summer warmth unparalleled over the past 2,000 years. Nature. Published online May 14, 2024. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07512-y

Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: a scientific assessment 

International Labour Organization. Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate: global report

Lancet Countdown: Tracking progress on health and climate change

NIH. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Human health impacts of climate change

Pan American Health Organization. Climate change and health

U.S. Global Change Research program

World Economic Forum. Quantifying the Impact of Climate Change on Human Health. 2024

Yale Center on Climate Change and Health

More from the medical literature

Use the UI Journal and Article Locator with DOI search to find full text.

Gordon IO, Mehta N, Isaacson JH, Khatri SB. How does climate change impact our patients? Cleve Clin J Med. 2023 Apr 3;90(4):221-226. doi: 10.3949/ccjm.90a.22007

Qu C, Chen Y.  Burden of stroke attributable to nonoptimal temperature in 204 countries and territories: A Population-Based Study, 1990-2019. Neurology. 2024 May14;102(9):e209299. https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000209299

Vicedo-Cabrera, A.M., Scovronick, N., Sera, F. et al. The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate changeNat. Clim. Chang. 11, 492–500 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01058-x

Li, T., Horton, R. & Kinney, P. Projections of seasonal patterns in temperature- related deaths for Manhattan, New YorkNature Clim Change 3, 717–721 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1902

Oudin Åström, D., Forsberg, B., Ebi, K. et al. Attributing mortality from extreme temperatures to climate change in Stockholm, SwedenNature Clim Change 3, 1050–1054 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2022

Mitchell, D. Climate attribution of heat mortalityNat. Clim. Chang. 11, 467–468 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01049-y

Vaidyanathan A, Gates A, Brown C, Prezzato E, Bernstein A. Heat-related Emergency Department visits — United States, May–September 2023. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2024;73:324–329. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7315a1.

Vicedo Cabrera AM. with the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine in Bern. She has a number of studies exploring climate and human health - these might provide methodology ideas. This is her ORCID page - many of the items listed are preprints / not peer reviewed.

Zhao Q, Li S, Ye T, et al. Global, regional, and national burden of heatwave-related mortality from 1990 to 2019: A three-stage modelling studyPLoS Med. 2024;21(5):e1004364. Published 2024 May 14. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1004364

Heat exposure / Extreme temperature

Alahmad B, ... , Gasparrini A; Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Network. Extreme Temperatures and Stroke Mortality: Evidence From a Multi-Country Analysis. Stroke. 2024 May 22. doi: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.123.045751. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38776169.

Brink N, ...  Chersich MF; Climate and Heat-Health Study Group. Impacts of heat exposure in utero on long-term health and social outcomes: a systematic review. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2024 May 4;24(1):344. doi: 10.1186/s12884-024-06512-0. PMID: 38704541; PMCID: PMC11069224.

Chen K, ... Peters A. Triggering of myocardial infarction by heat exposure is modified by medication intake. Nature Cardiovascular Research. 2022 Aug;1(8):727-31.

Gamboa L,... Lertxundi U. Analysis of heat stroke and heat exhaustion cases in EudraVigilance pharmacovigilance database. Eur J Clin Pharmacol. 2023 May;79(5):679-685. doi: 10.1007/s00228-023-03487-3. Epub 2023 Apr 3. PMID: 37009927; PMCID: PMC10068193.

Gould CF, Heft-Neal S, Heaney AK, Bendavid E, Callahan CW, Kiang MV, Graff Zivin J, Burke M. Temperature extremes impact mortality and morbidity differently. Sci Adv. 2025 Aug;11(31):eadr3070. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adr3070. Epub 2025 Jul 30. PMID: 40737397.

Henderson SB, ...  Kosatsky T. Hot weather and death related to acute cocaine, opioid and amphetamine toxicity in British Columbia, Canada: a time-stratified case-crossover study. CMAJ Open. 2023 Jun 27;11(3):E569-E578. doi: 10.9778/cmajo.20210291. PMID: 37369523; PMCID: PMC10310343.

Layton JB, ... Setoguchi S. Heatwaves, medications, and heat-related hospitalization in older Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions. PLoS One. 2020 Dec 10;15(12):e0243665. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243665. PMID: 33301532; PMCID: PMC7728169.

Liu J, ... Bi P. Heat exposure and cardiovascular health outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet Planet Health. 2022 Jun;6(6):e484-e495. doi: 10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00117-6. Erratum in: Lancet Planet Health. 2022 Aug;6(8):e644. doi: 10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00167-X. PMID: 35709806.

Yin P, ... Kan H. Temperature-related death burden of various neurodegenerative diseases under climate warming: a nationwide modelling study. Nat Commun. 2023 Dec 12;14(1):8236. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-44066-5. PMID: 38086884; PMCID: PMC10716387.

Air / Asthma / Allergies / Wildfire smoke

Anderegg WRL, .., Ziska L. Anthropogenic climate change is worsening North American pollen seasons. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Feb 16;118(7):e2013284118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2013284118. PMID: 33558232; PMCID: PMC7896283.

 

Chen K, ... Yang W. Canadian Wildfire Smoke and Asthma Syndrome Emergency Department Visits in New York City. JAMA. 2023 Oct 10;330(14):1385-1387. doi: 10.1001/jama.2023.18768. PMID: 37733685; PMCID: PMC10514869. Shows one way of connecting local data to a health outcome.

 

Connolly R, ... Jerrett M. Mortality attributable to PM2.5 from wildland fires in California from 2008 to 2018. Sci Adv. 2024 Jun 7;10(23):eadl1252. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adl1252. Epub 2024 Jun 7. PMID: 38848356; PMCID: PMC11160451.

 

Nogueira LM, Yabroff KR, Yates E, Shultz JM, Valdez RB, Nori-Sarma A. Facility exposure to wildfire disasters and hospital length of stay following lung cancer surgery. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2025 Mar 11:djaf040. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djaf040. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40064312.

 

Zhang Y, Steiner AL. Projected climate-driven changes in pollen emission season length and magnitude over the continental United States. Nat Commun. 2022 Mar 15;13(1):1234. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28764-0. PMID: 35292649; PMCID: PMC8924258.