The impact of climate change on health is receiving increasing attention at the national level, primarily when extreme weather events such as hurricanes and wildfires affect communities across the country. The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) provides a forum through its Climate, Health, and Equity Subcommittee for epidemiologists and other public health professionals who work in the climate and health field at state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) levels.

For more information about the Climate, Health and Equity Subcommittee and its activities, please contact Margaret Thelen. Click here to view other Environmental Health/Occupational Health/Injury activities.

 Resources:  

• Climate and Health Indicators: CSTE’s climate and health indicators support climate and health surveillance and assessment by utilizing relevant existing data sources to summarize the health effects of climatic conditions. In 2011, a workgroup was convened to develop 24 indicators: 1) Environmental, 2) Health Outcome, 3) Mitigation, and 4) Adaptation, which aim to measure current vulnerability to climate variability and change and aim to track possible changes in health outcomes across state, local, and regional populations. 

• Asthma Indicators: CSTE members maintain indicators to quantify asthma morbidity and mortality for the purpose of surveillance and public health action. The CSTE Asthma Indicators Template will assist users in computing age-adjusted prevalence rates for the two indicators, and see the Lessons Learned Summary Document for user experiences. Please note that these indicators were last reviewed in 2012 and may not reflect the most current data available. 

• Air Quality Indicators: CSTE members maintain indicators to quantify the health effects of ambient air pollution for the purpose of surveillance and public health action. Standardized and comparable across states, these can be used to detect trends over time, identify geographic areas needing public health engagements, and support environmental public health policy efforts. 

• Syndromic Surveillance Wildfire Guidance Document: In 2021, a workgroup convened to develop and validate two novel syndrome definitions (queries): 1) Fire and Smoke Inhalation v1 and 2) Air Quality-related Respiratory Illness v1. This report includes the two queries and provides guidance to public health professionals to adapt the queries within their jurisdictions. 

• Cold-Related Illness Query: Guidance for Implementing Cold-Related Illness Syndromic Surveillance in Public Health Practice: In 2018, the CSTE Climate, Health & Equity Subcommittee formed a workgroup to create a cold-related illness (CRI) standardized syndrome definition and implementation guidance. The CRI definition has been implemented in NSSP's ESSENCE, and associated documentation is also available on the NSSP CoP Knowledge Repository. A success story on this work was published by the NSSP CoP and can be read

• Syndromic Surveillance Climate and Health Guidance Document: In 2016, a workgroup came together to encourage surveillance of climate-related health impacts by developing general instructions on how a jurisdiction may use their syndromic surveillance systems for climate and health surveillance. The guidance document provides guidance for the following topics: (1) to identify weather or climate-related surveillance outcomes, (2) to develop a syndrome case definition, (3) to combine external and internal syndromic surveillance data with environmental data, (4) to interpret and display data, and (5) to engage with partners. The final section of the document discusses the strengths and limitations of adding data from a syndromic surveillance system to climate and health surveillance.

• 2021 CSTE Climate, Health, and Equity Summit Final Event Packet: CSTE, in collaboration with CDC’s Climate and Health Program, virtually convened the 2021 CSTE Climate, Health, and Equity Summit on May 3-4, 2021. CSTE partnered with Urban Health Solutions, LLC to provide an engaging and interactive virtual experience for attendees to hear from both the federal, and STLT levels to empower epidemiologists at STLT health departments. The two-day, virtual Summit provided an opportunity for colleagues to share new information, best practices, and foster collaborations with partners to collectively advance action on climate, health, and equity. 

Archived Resources:  

CSTE previously supported the Climate & Respiratory Health Workgroup (formerly known as the Asthma and Allergy Workgroup) and in 2017, the workgroup was rescoped to cover broader climate and respiratory health topics. In 2020, this workgroup was sunset. 

• Pollen White Paper: Does Available Scientific Evidence Support the Inclusion of Pollen as a Nationally Consistent Data and Measure Indicator on the Environmental Public Health Tracking Network?