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Download NowAbout Us
The Lancet Countdown works to ensure that health is at the centre of how governments understand and respond to climate change. Our work ranges from ensuring policymakers have access to high-quality evidence-based guidance, through to providing the health profession with the tools they need to improve public health.
Our Work
Climate Change threatens to undermine the last 50 years of gains in public health, intensifying heatwaves and extreme weather events, worsening flood and drought, altering the spread of infectious diseases, and exacerbating poverty and mental ill-health. Crucially, the response to climate change brings immense benefits for human health, with cleaner air, healthier diets, and more liveable cities.
The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change exists to monitor this transition from threat to opportunity. We are a collaboration of over 120 leading experts from academic institutions and UN agencies across the globe, bringing together climate scientists, engineers, energy specialists, economists, political scientists, public health professionals and doctors.
Each year our findings are published annually in medical journal The Lancet ahead of the UN climate change negotiations. Our data makes clear how climate change is affecting our health, the consequences of delayed action and the health benefits of a robust response.
Our Background
The 2015 Lancet Commission’s conclusion – that ‘tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century’ highlighted the need for a global monitoring system with the ability to engage policymakers and support health professionals.
In 2016 the Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change was formed to address this gap, beginning with a public consultation to identify key areas of health and climate change to track and monitor. The collaboration recognises that the voice of the health profession is essential in driving forward progress on climate change and realising the health benefits of a robust response.
Publishing annually in The Lancet, with strategic and financial support from the Wellcome Trust, The Lancet Countdown is hosted by University College London, and works with more than 35 partners around the world to track and understand the link between climate change and health.
Supported by:
The Wellcome Trust are a politically and financially independent global charitable foundation. The Wellcome Trust allows scientists and researchers to take on big problems, fuel imaginations, and spark debate, with the aim of improving health for everyone. The Our Planet, Our Health programme is a community of researchers who are taking on the challenges that food systems, increasing urbanisation and climate change pose to our health.
Founded in 1823, the Lancet family of world-class journals is committed to improving lives through medical research. With offices in London, New York, and Beijing. The Lancet publishes a weekly journal and monthly specialty journals in the fields of child & adolescent health, diabetes & endocrinology, digital health, gastroenterology & hepatology, global health, haematology, HIV, infectious diseases, neurology, oncology, planetary health, psychiatry, public health, respiratory medicine, and rheumatology.
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