Become a Member

•

Covering climate change, infectious diseases and health

AHCJ Staff

Share:

By Bara Vaida

Diseases caused by mosquitoes, ticks and fleas tripled and nine new pathogens carried by these insects have been discovered in the U.S. since 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Water-borne bacteria that thrive in warm conditions have shown up in Alaska marine life and the number of bacteria resistant to most antibiotics is rising.

A common thread involved in all of these public health threats is climate change.

As the amount of carbon dioxide has spiked in the atmosphere over the past 100 years, land and ocean temperatures have risen about 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit. Rising temperatures have led to more violent storms, bigger rainfalls, droughts, wildfires, flooding and increased fluctuations in heat and cold around the globe. Reproduction of insects carrying pathogens dangerous to humans has sped up and rising temperatures have enabled them to spread into new environments.

“We’re getting down to a point where people need to act immediately to try to prevent the most catastrophic consequences,” Caren Solomon, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital told Vox News.  If nothing changes, these public health threats will only “get tremendously worse” and result in hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, she says.

Solomon is one of a number of physicians that have been recently speaking up to engage the public and government leaders to connect the dots between climate change and public health, because most do not. In a poll from 2015, more than 60 percent of Americans had given no or little thought to how global warming might effect public health, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Solomon co-authored a commentary in the Jan. 14, 2019, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, urging fellow doctors to raise awareness about climate change with their patients and to push the health system itself to become more environmentally aware. A separate review article in the Jan. 14 issue, Sir Andy Haines, M.D., a professor of environmental change and public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that between 2030 and 2050, climate change-related health problems, like emerging infectious diseases, could be the cause of about 250,000 deaths.

While his review is a call to action for doctors, Haines told the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, that journalists too can play a crucial role in helping to educate the public and prevent the worst effects of climate change.

“I think journalists have an absolutely crucial role, particularly in this era of ‘fake news,’” Haines told the Shorenstein Center. “Journalists have a very important perspective and role in helping the public to distinguish opinions and views that are based on strong evidence from those that are not.”

Ari Bernstein, M.D., a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital and co-chair of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment has been telling colleagues that they need to get up to speed on infectious disease illnesses that may never have been seen before in the U.S. because climate change “is a problem for people right now,” he said during a Jan. 22 AHCJ webcast.

And Derek R. MacFaddan, a physician and researcher at the University of Toronto’s department of medicine, co-authored a 2018 study that found warming temperatures caused by carbon pollution could be playing a role in the increasing rate of antibiotic resistance. The research showed that warming temperatures may increase the ability of bacteria to deploy resistance genes that render antibiotics ineffective.

MacFaddan said a group of researchers “found a signal that the associations between antibiotic resistance and temperature could be increasing over time,” according to the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech.

These doctors efforts and those of others in the medical community may be just one of many angles for journalists to explore in covering climate change and infectious diseases – a topic that is likely to only get more important in the coming years, and hasn’t been covered much as a public health issue.

To help AHCJ members with story ideas on this important topic, check out these resources:

Story ideas

  • Spend some time talking with doctors about what they doing to prepare for climate change. What are they advising pregnant women in terms of risks from vector-borne diseases? Have they talked about having a plan for dealing with excessive heat and air pollution with patients who have chronic health conditions?
  • Have there been more illnesses in your community from mosquitoes, ticks and flies and what is the community doing to protect itself from these insects? Are they investing in spraying?
  • Can the community’s sewer systems handle a flood or intense storm and has it considered what water-borne diseases people may be at risk of contracting? Are local environmental advocates working with the town’s infrastructure leaders on preparation for floods and storms?
  • Have your community hospitals faced disruptions in supplies from extreme weather events?
  • Talk to the scientists studying the connection between climate change and accelerating antibiotic resistance.

Tools from AHCJ and fellow journalists:

CDC Resources

For further reading

Experts

John Aucott, M.D.
Director, Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Clinical Research Center and associate professor of medicine
Contact: Marin Heden, (410) 502-9429, mhedin2@jhmi.edu
Specialist in tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease.

John Balbus, M.D., M.P.H.
Senior Adviser for Public Health, National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences and the Director, NIEHS-WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health Sciences
Contact: john.balbus@nih.gov, or Christine Bruske Flowers, 919-541-3665, bruskec@niehs.nih.gov
He is the HHS principal to the U.S. global change research program and co-chairs working groups on climate change and health. He has also been the lead author of the nation’s national climate assessment reports.

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor, Center for Vector Borne Diseases at the University of California, Davis’s School of Veterinary Medicine
Contact: (530) 752-0151, cmbarker@ucdavis.edu
Leads the Barker Lab which researchers the ecology and epidemiology of mosquito-borne diseases, like West Nile, dengue and Zika.

Aaron (Ari) Bernstein, M.D., M.P.H.
Co-director, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Climate, Health and Global Environment, pediatric hospitalist at Boston Children’s Hospital
Contact: Liz Purchia, lizpurchia@hsph.harvard.edu or 315-794-6943
He is leading the drive to educate fellow physicians and the public on climate change and health.

Juanita Constible
Senior Advocate, Climate and Health, Natural Resources Defense Council
Contact: jconstible@nrdc.org or via Elizabeth Heyd, 202-289-2424
She is a wildlife biologist and specializes in helping communities respond to the health effects of climate change.

Gina McCarthy
Director of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Climate, Health and Global Environment and Professor of the Practice of Public Health
Contact: Liz Purchia, lizpurchia@hsph.harvard.edu 315-794-6943
She is the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama.

Dr. Mark A. Mitchell M.D., M.P.H., FACPM
Associate Professor, Climate Change, Energy & Environmental Health Equity, Health & Climate Solutions, Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University
Contact: (860) 794-9497, mmitch3@gmu.edu
He is a former director of Hartford, Conn.’s department of health and leads the National Medical Association’s Commission on Environmental Health.

Physicians for Social Responsibility‘s medical and health professionals and health experts see the health impacts of climate change firsthand, and its chapters around the country serve as advocates on local health and climate issues.
Olivia Alperstein, media relations manager, oalperstein@psr.org, 202-587-5232

Minneapolis Health Journalism 2026 | May 27-30, 2026
Recent Posts

AHCJ Staff

Learn More

Share:

Tags: