2025/05/22 by Jhermayne Ubalde, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Peter N. Le Souëf +1 · 1 voice
Environmental Science · Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Climate Change and Health Impacts #Global Health Care Issues #Health disparities and outcomes
paper · pdf · doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-6670422/v1
crossref issued 2025/05/22 · crossref published 2025/05/22 · openalex publication_date 2025/05/22 · crossref created 2025/05/22 · crossref deposited 2025/08/18 · crossref indexed 2025/08/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Abstract Background National policies are essential for countries to adapt to the negative health impacts of climate change. Children are disproportionately affected by climate-sensitive health risks and must be at the heart of adaptation policies to address their vulnerabilities across sectors. Adaptation commitments worldwide are integrated into national adaptation plans, nationally determined contributions, national communications, and other multisectoral policies. We aimed to evaluate how effectively national climate change policies worldwide plan to protect child health, considering a range of determinants for successful policy implementation. Results National adaptation policies worldwide had poor planning for child health, with 43% of countries not mentioning child health at all. Around half of policies acknowledged the disproportionate health impacts of climate change on children, but most did not provide further explanation of these impacts. One-quarter (24%) of countries described goals and/or actions to promote child health but lacked clear targets for success. Six per cent of countries outlined monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, but none measured child health outcomes directly. Eleven per cent of countries involved multiple stakeholders in policy design and implementation, but rarely described the obligations of each party. Conclusions The design of national policies must be strengthened across multiple areas to protect child health from the harms of climate change. Policies should explicitly acknowledge children and provide a holistic description of their unique health risks. Goals should be both time- and age-sensitive with clear health targets, accompanied by actions that holistically address child health risks and evaluate policy outcomes in the region concerned. A clear strategy for resource allocation and mobilisation will improve the success of policy actions. These interventions should be regularly monitored and reviewed to facilitate continuous adaptation to the changing climate. Multi-level stakeholders must be involved in policy design and implementation, and their responsibilities should be clearly outlined to improve implementation success.