Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Public Health
Achieving the Human Right to Sanitation? Container based sanitation and intersectional vulnerabilities in a South African informal settlement
Published: 2026-02-25
Subjects: Public Health
Container based sanitation (CBS) is marketed as an innovative ‘improved’ service with potential to provide ‘safely managed’ sanitation for users in low resource settings. Yet little research has investigated this claim regarding the most marginalised individuals within these populations, many of whom experience myriad intersectional vulnerabilities. This paper examines and compares whether [...]
Household water storage compromises drinking water safety in a “safely managed” system
Published: 2026-02-24
Subjects: Public Health
While nearly three-quarters of the globe use safely managed drinking water services, water quality can deteriorate between the point of service provision and point of consumption due to intermittent supply and the need to store water at the household level. To test if water storage contributes to waterborne pathogen hazards, we estimated prevalence and concentration of enteric pathogens in piped [...]
The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health and Pharmaceuticals
Published: 2026-02-16
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Medical Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Public Health, Sustainability, Toxicology
Climate change and air pollution affect nearly every major organ system, altering both the presentation of disease and patient responses to pharmaceutical treatments. However, existing knowledge on how patients, healthcare professionals, and governments should prepare for these challenges is fragmented. Climate change contributes to premature mortality, increased morbidity, and exacerbation of [...]
Key enablers and barriers to climate-smart primary healthcare in South Africa: Insights from climate and health experts
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Public Health
Climate change poses escalating threats to global health, with disproportionately severe impacts in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) where structural vulnerabilities, resource constraints, and limited adaptive capacity heighten population-level risks. In these settings, primary health care (PHC), the frontline of service delivery, plays a pivotal role in implementing climate adaptation, [...]
Climate risk communications in the humanitarian health sector in East Africa: A case study from Médecins Sans Frontières
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Public Health
By 2030, it is estimated that the number of medium- to large-scale disaster events may increase to 560 per year compared to 400 in 2015. People less than 60 years of age in 2020 have been estimated to experience unprecedented extreme climate event exposures; the risk is even greater for younger generations as the planet gets warmer. This descriptive study aimed to explore how Médecins Sans [...]
Ocean climate variability and travel surveillance data inform understanding of global dengue dynamics
Published: 2026-01-28
Subjects: Public Health
Oceanic-atmospheric interactions significantly influence regional rainfall and vector-borne disease dynamics. Travel-related dengue cases serve as effective sentinels for dengue transmission, yet the impact of sea surface temperature (SST) variability on their occurrence remains under explored. Here we analyzed 2000–2019 GeoSentinel traveler dengue data alongside ERA5 SST and precipitation [...]
Health system resilience in the face of climate change: A policy scoping review of Indonesia
Published: 2026-01-27
Subjects: Public Health
Indonesia has experienced more frequent climate-driven disasters and a rise in climate-sensitive diseases, underscoring the need for stronger climate adaptation strategies in health. This study assessed policies across health and supporting sectors to evaluate their contribution to building a climate-resilient health system (CRHS) and strengthening emergency response capacity. We conducted a [...]
Health Impacts of Climate Change on Children and Adolescents: A Protocol for Review of Reviews
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Public Health
Introduction Climate change is a contemporary phenomenon of a grave concern to the global public health. Climate change events like extreme heat, rising sea levels, floods, food insecurity and others, significantly affect local, regional, and global life conditions. The climate crisis affects the health of the elderly, adults, workers, children and adolescents. However, climate change events are [...]
The impact of extreme temperatures on respiratory mortality in Brazil: evaluating regional adaptations to different thermal environments
Published: 2025-12-19
Subjects: Public Health
We conducted a nationwide ecological time-series study to quantify the association between ambient temperature and respiratory mortality across Brazil's diverse climates. Using data from 520 municipalities (population ≥50,000) from 2010 to 2020, we analysed 1,008,157 respiratory deaths (ICD-10 J00–J99) using distributed-lag non-linear models (lags 0–21 days) with quasi-Poisson regression, [...]
Associations between Climate Change and Infectious Diseases: A Systematic Review
Published: 2025-12-03
Subjects: Public Health
Climate change is increasingly recognized as a major driver of infectious disease dynamics, influencing disease distribution, seasonality, and outbreak intensity. This systematic review synthesizes evidence on how climate variability affects infectious diseases and evaluates predictive modeling approaches. Following PRISMA guidelines, we searched Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, and Scopus for [...]
Translating national climate policies to resilience actions at the subnational level in low resource settings: Lessons from Ghana’s health systems.
Published: 2025-11-22
Subjects: Public Health
According to the WHO 2021 Health and Climate Change Global Survey Report, most countries’ climate change and health plans are witnessing low to moderate implementation due to (among other reasons) insufficient funding, evidence, research, and multisectoral collaboration. In Ghana, the national climate change agenda has, for over a decade, consistently prioritized its health systems, but progress [...]
Climate Change Perceptions and Water Security: Evidence from Low-Income Urban Communities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Public Health
Background Water scarcity is being exacerbated by climate change, especially in low- and middle-income countries with limited adaptation capacity. Methods Between June and October 2023, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of 364 households in three districts of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We used structured questionnaires to evaluate the household's demographic characteristics, knowledge of [...]
Anthropogenic Environmental Change and Sexual and Reproductive Health in Southeast Asia: A Scoping Review
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Public Health
While often neglected, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is a significant dimension of the health implications of global anthropogenic environmental change, including climate change. However, literature on the topic is scarce and largely neglects low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and regions such as Southeast Asia. We thus aimed to synthesise the literature connecting anthropogenic [...]
Impact of weather and season on stored water contamination and infant diarrhea in climate-vulnerable, urban Mozambique
Published: 2025-11-18
Subjects: Public Health
Background: Diarrhea remains one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality for children under the age of five, despite reductions in its overall global burden in recent decades. However, climate change, and its associated meteorological conditions - heavy rainfall, temperature, flooding - has the potential to impede or reverse progress that has been made toward alleviating the burden of [...]
Crystalline silica content of natural, engineered, and synthetic stone products and their relation to silicosis policy development
Published: 2025-11-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Materials Science and Engineering, Public Health
Crystalline silica minerals – quartz, cristobalite, and tridymite – are hazardous when inhaled. They are at least an order of magnitude more toxic than crystalline silica-free inert mineral dusts. Workplace exposure to hazardous levels of crystalline silica is entirely preventable, yet accelerated silicosis is emerging in developed countries, from the fabrication of crystalline silica-rich [...]