4.2 Article

Early Warnings: The Lessons of COVID-19 for Public Health Climate Preparedness

Journal

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH SERVICES
Volume 50, Issue 3, Pages 264-270

Publisher

SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/0020731420928971

Keywords

COVID-19; climate change; public health

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The early 2020 response to COVID-19 revealed major gaps in public health systems around the world as many were overwhelmed by a quickly-spreading new coronavirus. While the critical task at hand is turning the tide on COVID-19, this pandemic serves as a clarion call to governments and citizens alike to ensure public health systems are better prepared to meet the emergencies of the future, many of which will be climate-related. Learning from the successes as well as the failures of the pandemic response provides some guidance. We apply several recommendations of a recent World Health Organization Policy Brief on COVID-19 response to 5 key areas of public health systems - governance, information, services, determinants, and capacity - to suggest early lessons from the coronavirus pandemic for climate change preparedness. COVID-19 has demonstrated how essential public health is to well-functioning human societies and how high the economic cost of an unprepared health system can be. This pandemic provides valuable early warnings, with lessons for building public health resilience.

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