Climate Change, Housing, and Health

New paper, with Ang Li and others, offering a framework for thinking how climate change, housing, and health intersect. The abstract:

Anthropogenic climate change is causing rapid shifts in temperature and weather patterns, both in location and intensity, making living conditions increasingly hazardous. This complicates housing's frontline role in protecting human health. When housing systems fail to provide universal access to secure, affordable, and suitable housing, social and health inequalities related to climate change are amplified. The location, construction, and operation of homes influence greenhouse gas emissions and must be improved to reduce their environmental impacts. This paper, the second in a Series on housing as a social determinant of health, builds a framework for conceptualising the interactions between housing, climate, and health. It identifies the pathways through which climate change affects housing and exacerbates health risks, and reflects on policy responses for climate resilience in housing and health.

Reference: Li, A., Toll, M., Chapman, R., Howden-Chapman, P., Hernández, D., Samuelson, H., Woodward, A. and Bentley, R., 2025. Housing at the intersection of health and climate change. The Lancet Public Health, 10(10), pp.e865-e873.

Social Vulnerability, Climate Change and Health: Scoping review.

 Very happy to see this new scoping review published in The Lancet Plenatary Health.

The recent IPCC assessment report argued that lack of ability to identify social vulnerability at a local and urban level was a critical barrier to climate adaptation planning.

We conducted a scoping review of 230 studies that examined social vulnerability to the health effects of climate change in order to understand the main foci of the literature and potential gaps.

We found that the main share of the research focused on high-income settings – the United States, Western Europe, Australia, Japan etc. China was the exception to that rule being the most researched country after the United States. The most vulnerable countries are lest studied. This is an issue for climate justice.

We found that most research focuses on a narrow set of socio-demographic variables. Age, sex, ethnicity, education, income being amongst the most used indicators of social vulnerability.

We found a relative paucity in the number of studies that address or measure broader structural dimensions of social vulnerability – issues of housing, access to community facilities beyond health services, governance are less researched.

We argued that a lot of the research is very descriptive rather than explanatory. Drawing on more social science understandings of vulnerability and a broader range of indicators could help explain how group membership/social category translates to vulnerability and help identify leverage points for interventions.

Here is the abstract for the paper: 

The need to assess and measure how social vulnerability influences the health impacts of climate change has resulted in a rapidly growing body of research literature. To date, there has been no overarching, systematic examination of where this evidence is concentrated and what inferences can be made. This scoping review provides an overview of studies published between 2012 and 2022 on social vulnerability to the negative health effects of climate change. Of the 2115 studies identified from four bibliographic databases (Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and CAB Direct), 230 that considered indicators of social vulnerability to climate change impacts on health outcomes were selected for review. Frequency and thematic analyses were conducted to establish the scope of the social vulnerability indicators, climate change impacts, and health conditions studied, and the substantive themes and findings of this research. 113 indicators of social vulnerability covering 15 themes were identified, with a small set of indicators receiving most of the research attention, including age, sex, ethnicity, education, income, poverty, unemployment, access to green and blue spaces, access to health services, social isolation, and population density. The results reveal an undertheorisation and few indicators that conceptualise and operationalise social vulnerability beyond individual sociodemographic characteristics by identifying structural and institutional dimensions of vulnerability, and a preponderance of social vulnerability research in high-income countries. This Review highlights the need for future research, data infrastructure, and policy attention to address structural, institutional, and sociopolitical conditions, which will better support climate resilience and adaptation planning.  

Effects of Graduating during Economic Downturns on Mental Health: New paper

I have a new paper with Ang Li (reseachgate here) just published in Annals of Epidemiology looking at the effects of graduating during economic downturns on mental health.

We found that graduating during a time of increased unemployment is not good for either short-term mental health or long-term mental health. The scarring effect is particularly pronounced for men, people who don't receive government payments, and people with only vocational or secondary qualification.

People with higher education seem to do better and graduating during downturns had less of a lasting effect.

Title: Effects of graduating during economic downturns on mental health 

Abstract

Purpose

This study examined the effects of economic downturns at the time of graduation on short-term and long-term mental health of graduates.

Methods

Using a large longitudinal dataset whose respondents graduated from their highest level of education between 2001 and 2018 in Australia, the study investigated the effects of initial labor market conditions on psychological distress measures, quality-of-life mental health scales, and diagnoses of depression or anxiety since graduation.

Results

Evidence suggests the presence of a scarring effect of graduating during a recession on the mental health of young adults, particularly significant and persistent for men. Higher unemployment rates at graduation were associated with increased risks of high psychological distress and diagnoses of depression or anxiety, and lower levels of social functioning and mental well-being among men lasting over a decade. The psychological effect was largely driven by young adults with vocational or secondary qualifications or receiving no government allowance at graduation.

Conclusions

Policies should consider the psychological effect of graduating during recessions and focus particularly on vulnerable groups who are susceptible to adverse labor market conditions, such as graduates who are in cyclically sensitive occupations and have less or no work benefits and social protection. 

The full article can be found here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cOsO3k7xFjOxS