High Flyers tackle health effects of climate change at Think Tank

The Academy brought young researchers and leading scientists together to discuss climate change and its impacts on health at this year’s Theo Murphy High Flyers Think Tank, Climate change challenges to health: risks and opportunities.

The researchers, who met in Brisbane for three days in July, were organised into working groups to look at a range of issues that will be important for population health in a changing climate, including:

• temperature and extreme weather events
• infectious disease
• food and water supplies
• livelihood and disadvantage
• security, social instability and conflict.

The groups then put together initial recommendations to help guide policymakers, governments and the community to respond to the impacts of climate change on public health.

These included improving early bushfire and flood warning systems, establishing an Australian centre of communicable diseases, and creating greater links between the social and physical sciences.

These early recommendations will form the basis of more detailed formal recommendations that will be published later this year.

Media interest in the Think Tank was strong, with articles on the BBC and The Guardian websites, as well as interviews with an event speaker on ABC Radio National and ABC News Radio.