Climate-related stressors, community healthcare systems, and adaptation strategies: A scoping review

TL;DR

This review explores how climate stressors impact healthcare in African and Asian countries and highlights the need for better adaptation strategies, including the use of AI.

Contribution

The study identifies gaps in community health interventions and the underexplored potential of AI in addressing climate-sensitive health outcomes.

Findings

Current literature focuses on community perceptions and adaptation challenges rather than actionable interventions.

There is limited evidence on how AI can be used to improve community healthcare systems in response to climate stressors.

The review highlights significant gaps in published literature on climate-sensitive health interventions at the community level.

Abstract

Climate-related stressors are a global challenge with effects extending far beyond the environment, significantly impacting the provision of healthcare services, especially in the African and Asian countries selected for examination in this scoping review. Climate-related stressors are expected to significantly increase health risks in these countries, continuing to disproportionately affect vulnerable groups.

We conducted a scoping review to identify, select, and synthesize relevant literature on climate-related vulnerability factors, exposure pathways and interventions in the geographic regions where the nonprofit organization Medic (www.medic.org) operates. We also reviewed published literature that explored the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a potential tool for community health systems to adapt to and mitigate climate-sensitive health outcomes.

We searched PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science.

The search generated 3184 studies available in English since 2000. Overall, 96 studies were screened for inclusion, resulting in 30 studies selected for the review, including 4 reports and articles from gray literature. Overall, the review identified critical gaps in the literature on community-level health interventions to reduce climate-sensitive health risks.

The current literature is skewed toward community perception of climate-sensitive health outcomes and adaptation challenges faced by the health system. Results similarly revealed gaps in published literature on adaptation interventions in community health, and healthcare delivery more broadly, that employ AI.

There remains a need for more evidence on the potential use of AI for future interventions to address the growing threat of climate variability to community healthcare and climate-sensitive health outcomes.

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