Joint Indo-US Symposium
Climate Change and Health

CGH International Symposium
August 31 – September 2, 2009; Goa, India

Background

Climate change has enormous and diverse impacts on human society. These impacts include significant and diverse threats to human health stemming from extreme heat, weather-related disasters, shifting patterns of infectious disease and vector borne diseases, exacerbations of air pollution effects, and food and water scarcity amongst others. Developing countries, such as India, will bear the brunt of these public health impacts, and they are expected to become even more severe in the future.

Under the auspices of the existing Indo-US Collaboration on Environmental and Occupational Health, the Indian Council of Medical Research, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Michigan will convene a symposium to bring together key stakeholders and partners in academia, government and non-government organizations, the private sector and affected communities. The objective of the symposium will be an in-depth discussion of climate change and impact on health with a specific focus on "Prediction and Prevention" of these effects.

The Symposium

Sponsors and Planning Committee

The primary sponsors of the symposium were (in alphabetical order), the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), the United States Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, National Center for Environmental Health (CDC/NCEH) and the University of Michigan Center for Global Health (UMCGH). All three institutions committed to financial and/or in-kind contributions to the planning and execution of the symposium. The planning committee consisted of representatives from ICMR, CDC/ATSDR and UMCGH.

Goals and Objectives

The overall objective for the symposium was to develop consensus recommendations regarding a proposed "National Initiative" for Prediction and Prevention of Climate Change Health Impacts. The areas addressed included:

• Presentation and discussion of existing projects and approaches in selected areas that are vulnerable to climate-driven increases in public health impacts
• Presentation and discussion of new project proposals and approaches for climate change and health impact
• Exploration of implementation strategies for tools for surveillance, modeling and monitoring (e.g. geospatial imaging and mapping) to predict impacts of climate events and improve data collection
• Development and implementation of early warning systems and public health intervention strategies
• Discussion and development of research strategies and initiatives to address knowledge gaps in the above areas

The symposium consisted of a focused group of scientists who were able to describe and build upon ongoing scientific work to address these objectives. A set of 8-10 brief presentations accompanied by short papers were requested in advance of the symposium. Small groups of scientists conducted pre-symposium discussions (via email and/or conference calls) to sharpen the focus so that the symposium could make significant progress in discussing and developing actual concept proposals during working groups discussions conducted at the symposium.

 

Dr Srinath Reddy (Public Health Foundation of India)	The Leaders: Dr Vikas Kapil (CDC), Dr Howard Hu (UM SPH), Dr Bela Shah (ICMR), Dr Srinath Reddy (PHFI), Ms Rani Kotha (UM CGH), Dr Sandro Galea (UM CGH), and Dr Howard Frumkin (CDC/NCEH)	Dr Hu talks with Dr Kalpana Galakrishnan (Sri Ramchandra Medical College)