Opinion | To protect children from climate change, measure environmental health risks
- Although environmental risks are a major cause of childhood illness and death in Asia, many governments lack ready access to comparable data
- Developing children’s environmental health indicators is one way to assess existing conditions and evaluate progress in improving children’s health
But as countries seek to mitigate environmental risks, they first need data to help drive the political and popular will to take action.
Even though environmental health risks are a major cause of childhood illness and death in Asia, many governments lack ready access to the specific and internationally comparable data they need to assess existing conditions and evaluate progress in improving children’s health.
One solution is developing children’s environmental health indicators.
An environmental health indicator is a way of presenting summarised, aggregated and nonidentifiable data to describe a population’s health status in relation to environmental factors. By using indicators, countries can begin tracking, assessing and reporting on the impact of the environment on children’s health.
For example, health officials can track the prevalence of childhood asthma as well as indoor air quality in homes, providing data that can be used to design interventions and track their success.