Interdisciplinary Regional Collaboration for Public Health Adaptation to Climate Change in the Eastern Mediterranean

Public Health and Water Resources—Adaptation to Climate Change in the Eastern Mediterranean What: A first workshop on climate change, health impacts, and adaptation over the eastern Mediterranean assembled scientists from six countries working on climate science, public health, and policy formulation and encouraged discussions and collaborations under the umbrella of the Regional Climate Change Adaptation Center (RCCAC) in the face of regional conflict. Specifically, in the whole Mediterranean region, climate change leads to alterations in the mean, variability, seasonality, and extremes in one or more climatic variables, such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, and aerosols (Ulbrich et al. 2013), thus may influence the incidence of various climate sensitive diseases. Public health and policy scientists stressed that climate change is expected to affect public health directly through physical influences such as extreme heat waves and cold spells (e.g., Peretz et al. 2011), and indirectly through the effect on chronic and infectious diseases. The practical problems facing local health systems were also a subject of discussion, including underfunding, lack of preparation for dealing with climate-related illnesses, and the adverse effect of regional political conflict (e.g., Lange 2019). Since the full effects of climate change on public health are currently not completely understood, recommendations in the public sector are still based on the allocation of resources for preparatory measures that will have a positive effect on public health, irrespective of climate change.