Source: Anderko, L., Chalupka, S., Du, M., & Hauptman, M. (2020). Climate changes reproductive and children’s health: a review of risks, exposures, and impacts. Pediatric Research, 87(2), 414-419.
Criteria for selection: This peer review study provides comprehensive evidence on the impacts of climate change on children’s and reproductive health, offering valuable insights into environmental exposures and developmental vulnerabilities that are essential for understanding population-level health risks.
LEARN Brief Credits: Dr. Jeannie Haubert
Overview:
This review evaluates how climate change affects children’s and reproductive health, focusing on environmental exposures (e.g., heat, air-pollution, vector-borne disease) and developmental risks from conception through childhood. It highlights heightened vulnerability of children due to physiological, developmental, and dependency factors.
Key Insights:
- Children are uniquely vulnerable to climate-driven environmental exposures: Heat, air pollution, and changes in vector-borne disease are increasingly linked to adverse outcomes in prenatal, infancy and childhood.
- Reproductive & early-life exposures are critical and have long-term implications: The review indicates that exposures during pregnancy (e.g., heat stress, pollution) can affect fetal development, with possible lifelong impacts.
- Infrastructure and operational planning must integrate climate-resilience to protect well-being and learning: The review underscores that as climate-driven risks grow, schools must adapt not just for safety but for sustaining learning and equity.
Action Steps:
- Review school building and classroom environments for extreme-heat or air-quality risk (e.g., portable classrooms, older HVAC) and establish monitoring of heat/air-quality alerts to guide outdoor-activity decisions.
- Update health-education curriculum for students to include awareness of heat/air pollution risks and hydration strategies.
- Partner with local public-health agencies to raise awareness among families and pregnant staff about climate-exposure risks.
- Ensure school-based wellness programs include prenatal outreach where relevant (e.g., for staff or community family programs).
- Update emergency-response plans to include climate-events (heat waves, air-pollution episodes, extreme weather) with triggers and communication protocols and prioritize facility upgrades (HVAC, filtration, shading, green landscaping) especially in under-resourced schools.
Full Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31731287/
