Campus Review Vol 30. Issue 06 | Page 22

industry & research campusreview.com.au Cause of death: climate Expert argues climate change should be written on death certificates. Arnagretta Hunter interviewed by Wade Zaglas According to ANU experts, deaths from climate change have been “substantially under reported” in Australia’s national health records, and it’s high time climate change was listed as a reason for death on official documents. Indeed, the research contends that deaths attributed to environmental health factors is at least 50 times more than what is officially recorded on death certificates. Recently published in The Lancet Planetary Health, figures show that over the past 11 years, 340 deaths in Australia were recorded as being due to excessive heat. But a more in-depth analysis has dwarfed that figure, finding 36,475 deaths could have been attributed to excessive heat brought on by climate change. “Climate change is a killer, but we don’t acknowledge it on death certificates,” says study co‐author Dr Arnagretta Hunter from ANU Medical School. Campus Review spoke with Hunter to find out more about this terrible – some would say predictable – revelation. CR: Why do you think the medical fraternity has been uneasy about making a direct link between climate change and mortality? The medical fraternity has long understood that elements of the environment will determine the health and wellbeing of patients. When we look at the practice of medicine, we all understand the biology of medicine, and we’re very good at framing what occurs to people through the context of diagnoses, things like heart disease and lung disease. Certainly, we’re not arguing that that be removed. Those things are important and a central part of how we evaluate health data, but we have also appreciated, particularly in the last 20 years, that there are other determinants that influence health and wellbeing. There’s tremendous literature on the social determinants of health. Where you live, how much education you have, how much money you make, who you live with, what sort of work you do – all these things influence your health and wellbeing. In fact, we collect that in our health data. What we don’t collect in health data in Australia, and what we think really needs to be looked at, are these environmental determinants of health. And it’s not just about climate change. It’s simply that some of the environmental factors we live with influence health and wellbeing, and that includes issues like heat, floods, droughts, problems with cold, and so on. If you go to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare database, and you look at the way in which Australian health data is collected and collated, it’s an extraordinary repository. You can find out the rates of heart disease and different cancers and different forms of treatment and hospitalisations and all sorts of amazing data across the Australian healthcare sector. If you’re talking to a population of people who live in rural Australia, I think many of them would be surprised to know there’s very little analysis done on droughts. If you put droughts or heat events into that database, very little data comes up. That’s the crux of our argument: some of these environmental factors have a profound effect on our health and wellbeing. Linking it back to climate change, as we see temperatures rise – which is a particular problem in northern Australia – we may see a significant mortality effect of that for our populations who are living under those circumstances. You say climate change is the single greatest health threat we face globally, even after 20