The year 2024 ranked among the hottest on record, bringing more frequent and intense heat waves. According to the Canadian Medical Association, extreme heat strains health systems and poses serious risks to public health, worsening conditions like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and contributing to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.
Warmer weather can affect children's health, too, even before they are born. Hotter and longer heatwaves can cause problems during pregnancy, increasing the chance of babies being born early. Young children can get heatstroke, and smoke from wildfires can cause asthma and other respiratory problems.
A team of scholars in the University of Calgary One Child Every Child initiative is looking at this problem through a research lens.
This transdisciplinary research program is bringing together researchers, engineers, and data analytic experts. The goal is to provide concrete evidence on how climate change impacts child health in Alberta and Canada, and to use this evidence to propose interventions that would alleviate these impacts.
Daniel Helldén
"While we have evidence for how different individual consequences of climate change impact the health of children, no project, in Canada or globally, has taken a holistic approach to understanding the impacts of many different climate change aspects simultaneously. The idea was born from the understanding that children are uniquely vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change and that the impacts compound to worsen health outcomes," says Dr. Daniel Helldén, MD, PhD, guest postdoctoral scholar at the Schulich School of Engineering and one of the investigators for the research program.
Children, particularly those in disadvantaged communities, are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. There is an urgent need for comprehensive research to understand how climate change affects children's health in Canada. This research will allow researchers, policy makers and communities in Canada and globally to better understand the health burden of climate change on this and future generations of children.
"Once we do all this work, ideally, what we would like is to enable both communities and governments to be proactive and look at mitigation and adaptation strategies that can reduce impacts on affected communities," says Dr. Steven Bryant, PhD, professor in the Schulich School of Engineering and lead on the project. "As part of the project, we will engage Indigenous communities and work on co-creating solutions. Indigenous communities in Canada, are likely to be strongly impacted as climate change occurs, especially the farther north you go in Canada, the bigger the impacts, the faster the impacts."
Steven Bryant
This project is one of six research programs recently supported with funding from the One Child Every Child (OCEC) research initiative. These programs are designed to address the goals of the thematic focus areas for OCEC through interdisciplinary collaborations. The current projects are led out of the University of Calgary and OCEC institutional partner, the University of Alberta.
"UCalgary has long been a leader in child health and wellness research and the One Child Every Child initiative underscores our commitment to making a difference in the lives of families across Canada," says Dr. William Ghali, vice-president (Research). "By fostering interdisciplinary collaborations, we are harnessing expertise to address complex health issues. The impact of these projects will resonate far beyond our local community, contributing to the health and well-being of children and families nationwide."
The full list of One Child Every Child programs include :
- Understanding the Role of Preterm Birth and Early Interventions on Child Health and Wellness Dr. Amy Metcalfe, PhD (University of Calgary)
- Complications and Conditions in Pregnancy Dr. Padma Kaul, PhD (University of Alberta)
- Mapping and modelling the early human brain-placenta axis Dr. Meghan Riddell, PhD (University of Alberta)
- Same Mutation, Different Disease: The Challenge of Variable Expressivity Dr. Benedikt Hallgrimsson, PhD (University of Calgary)
- Climate change and child health: Accelerating action to protect children in Canada and globally Dr. Steven Bryant, PhD (University of Calgary)
- Healthy Schools | LINK | Écoles Saines Linking Implementation, Networks, and Knowledge Dr. Kate Storey, PhD (University of Alberta)
About One Child, Every Child
Led by the University of Calgary, the One Child Every Child research initiative works to dramatically improve the lives of children, their families, and maternal health across Canada. The initiative is funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund with support from the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation and the Azrieli Foundation.
Dr. Steven Bryant, PhD, is the inaugural academic lead for Transdisciplinary Scholarship, professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the Schulich School of Engineering, and holds the university's first inaugural Canada Excellence Research Chair in Materials Engineering. He is also a member of the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute at the Cumming School of Medicine.
Daniel Helldén, MD, PhD, is a guest post-doctoral scholar at the University of Calgary and he is a resident in pediatrics at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital, Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden.
