Monitoring the health effects of climate change

Detection and measurement of health effects of climate change are necessary to provide evidence on which to base national and international policies relating to control and mitigation measures. Unequivocal evidence of health effects, and accurate measurements of their size, can come only from hard data. However, climate varies naturally as well as through human influences and in turn is only one of many determinants of health. There must be careful consideration of how best to collect and analyse information that will provide secure evidence of climate change impacts. In this chapter, we consider how monitoring may help provide evidence of early health impacts, examining the principles on which monitoring should be based, potential sources of monitoring data, and discussing issues in the analysis and interpretation of such data. There is a complex relationship between climatechange and health. Detecting and quantifying impacts on health will be gained only through broad scientific effort rather than individual monitoring studies.