Completed Projects

Informing public health messaging on health and climate change
University of York
Hilary Graham

Background:

Climate change is an increasing risk to people’s health in the UK, and one likely to widen health inequalities. Highlighting these health impacts is seen as a way of engaging the public in climate change and building public support for climate action. However, there is very little UK evidence on whether linking climate change to people’s health would increase public engagement and support.

Aims:

Focusing on adults in the UK, this new project investigated the potential for a focus on people’s health to increase public engagement in climate change and support for action.

The project aimed to provide evidence on the importance of a focus on health with respect to:

people’s concerns about climate change
people’s support for climate policies

Methods:

The project was supported by an innovative programme of community-based public involvement and a set of preparatory studies.

The preparatory studies included new analyses of qualitative data collected as part of our earlier PH-PRU project where we asked over 1000 participants to record in their own words ‘what comes to mind when you think of climate change?’.

Our preparatory work also included a study of coverage of health and climate change on Twitter (now X) in March-May 2023. Additionally, we conducted a scoping review of studies employing discrete choice experiments (DCE), a method we used in one of our surveys.

We then conducted a series of surveys of UK adults aged ≥18 years. Quotas were set to match the UK population for age group, gender, ethnic group, educational attainment, and region/country of residence.

The surveys addressed the two aims of the project. They investigated the importance of a focus on health with respect to (i) people’s concerns about the impacts of climate change (one survey, Oct-Nov 2023, n=2009) and people’s support for climate policies (two surveys, Jan 2024, n=365, and Feb-Apr 2024, n=1006).

Reseach Team

Is health among the public’s major concerns about the impacts of climate change?

In responses to the qualitative question ‘what comes to mind when you think of climate change?’, only one of 1000+ participants referred to health and wellbeing. In our public involvement groups, health again did not emerge as a major focus of concern. In our analysis of Twitter (now X), only 2% of 668,810 posts on climate change referred to health.

In the main surveys, a large majority of participants noted that they were concerned about climate change. But the evidence from the surveys again suggested that health was not among the public’s major concerns about our changing climate. Instead, it was the impacts of climate change on essential resources like food and water and on animals and nature that were the major concerns. In the surveys, only one in ten selected health as their most important concern; in contrast, one in two selected essential resources and over 40% selected animals and nature. This pattern – of health being less important than other impacts of climate change – was consistent across groups with different views on climate change.

One of our surveys explored whether participants’ views differed when the question referred to general impacts (e.g., how climate change might affect people’s health and wellbeing) or to personal impacts (how climate change might affect my health and wellbeing). The proportions identifying health as a major concern did not change. However, impacts on children were more significantly more likely to be selected as a major concern when the question referred to ‘the children in my family’ rather than ‘children’.

Is the impact of climate change on people’s health among the public’s top priorities for climate policies?

In our surveys of what issues climate policies should focus on, we again found that issues other than people’s health and wellbeing were identified as more important. Essential resources and animals and nature were more likely to be identified as the major issues which participants would like climate policies to focus on.

We found that emphasising positive outcomes (e.g., with stronger policies, people’s health will be better in future) elicited much higher levels of support than avoiding negative outcomes (without stronger policies, people’s health will be worse in future). Across all potential policy foci, a significantly higher proportion reported that they would be more likely to support the policy if it was presented in terms of securing benefits rather than reducing risks.

In conclusion

Our findings suggest that, rather than a single focus on people’s health and wellbeing, there may be greater potential for building public engagement in climate change and support for climate policies through a broader focus on protecting the essentials of life. This could integrate the public’s concerns about protecting the basic determinants of health (like food and water) and the natural world that provides them. This integrated agenda could also encompass people’s health and the wellbeing of children.