• Electric heat pumps and induction stoves
• Electrifying transportation
• Expanding public transportation
• Infrastructure for pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly communities
• Plant based diets
• Increasing access to family planning
Type 1 solutions that reduce emissions of heat-trapping pollution—and thereby reduce air and water pollution and improve human health—include rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels to clean, reliable, and renewable energy sources [e.g., solar, wind, and geothermal; ( 6 , 15 )]; heating and cooling buildings and water with electricity-powered heat pumps and geothermal HVACs ( 20 , 21 ); cooking with electricity-powered induction stoves ( 22 ); and electrifying all possible modes of transportation [cars, trucks, and buses; ( 15 , 23 )]. Developing pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly communities and effective, affordable public transit options are additional solutions to reduce air pollution, limit climate change, increase physical activity, reduce obesity, and improve mental health ( 15 , 24 , 25 ). Other measures can result in emission reductions while simultaneously addressing broader societal and health needs ( 21 ). For example, promoting plant-based diets and reducing food waste can also reduce emissions and enhance human health ( 26 ). Similarly, increasing access to family planning resources and educating girls can help slow future population growth and emission rates while also improving gender equality, access to education, and reproductive healthcare ( 19 , 21 ).
At present, the primary Type 2 solutions to reduce carbon pollution in the atmosphere are nature-based, although technology-based carbon removal is an area of active research and development. Nature-based solutions include forest restoration, improved soil management practices for agriculture, greening urban and suburban spaces, and composting food waste ( 21 ). These actions also benefit human health by reducing urban heat islands, reducing flooding and associated health risks (e.g., mold), reducing exposure to pesticides and other agricultural chemicals, and improving mental health ( 15 ).
Finally, Type 3 solutions encompass adaptations that can enhance community resilience to the harmful impacts of climate change, often reinforcing Type 1 and Type 2 solutions. Examples of public health resilience measures include establishing community cooling and clean air centers to limit exposure to dangerous heat and air pollution ( 27 , 28 ); improving control measures for vector-borne diseases ( 6 , 29 ); and providing counseling to help people cope with mental health impacts of climate change, including climate anxiety and depression and post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from exposure to extreme weather events ( 30 ).
Put simply, climate solutions are health solutions , and they present local, national, and global opportunities to foster cleaner, healthier, and safer communities, reduce morbidity and premature mortality, and lower health costs ( 11 ). When designed and implemented wisely, climate solutions can also help redress systemic and social inequalities and ensure fair and equitable access to the social and environmental determinants of health, which include clean energy, air, and water; affordable, safe, and nutritious food; a safe and secure neighborhood with access to green spaces; and economic security.
Building enduring public and political will for climate and health solutions may therefore be the most important—and promising—public health objective for the next several decades. Health professionals have long intuited that acknowledging and promoting the human health benefits of climate solutions as “co-benefits” of climate action would help advance this objective ( 16 – 19 ). Social science research conducted over the past decade has confirmed this intuition and refined it.
Public understanding of the health relevance of climate change seems limited, although it appears to be growing. As recently as 2014, about six in 10 (61%) Americans had given “little or no thought” to how global warming might impact human health, and relatively few could name a single way in which climate change harms health or whose health is most likely to be harmed ( 31 ). A 2018 review of peer-reviewed studies on public awareness of the health relevance of climate change worldwide yielded similar findings ( 32 ). Between 2014 and 2020, however, Americans' understanding of the health consequences of climate change grew substantially ( 33 , 34 ).
Social science research has shown that communicating the health relevance of climate change can increase public engagement with the issue ( 35 , 36 ). Most fundamentally, presenting information about how climate change harms health and whose health is most likely to be harmed can increase people's concern about and engagement with the issue ( 37 , 38 ). Moreover, providing information about the health benefits of climate solutions can enhance people's intentions to advocate for such solutions ( 39 ). Certain health benefits of climate solutions are more compelling than others, with messages about the health benefits of clean energy and improved community design being the most compelling ( 39 ). Including a call to action for climate solutions advocacy that demonstrates how many others are engaging in advocacy (i.e., a social norm) can further enhance the effectiveness of advocacy appeals ( 39 ). Among certain vulnerable populations (e.g., low income, less educated, and those with preexisting health conditions), communication that makes the connection between climate and health has also been shown to increase the understanding of the issue and intention to take action ( 38 ). Finally, including information about the bad-faith actors in the climate discussion—like the CEOs of fossil fuel companies and politicians working against climate solutions—can also increase the effectiveness of climate and health messages by enhancing emotional engagement with the issue, policy support, and advocacy intentions ( 40 ).
A multinational study showed that providing health-framed information about climate change can significantly increase public support for climate mitigation policies, including among people who are not concerned about climate change per se ( 41 ). This finding—that health-framed climate messaging is effective with people who are not necessarily concerned about climate change—has been demonstrated in other studies as well ( 35 – 37 , 39 ), suggesting that climate/health communication may be an important strategy for reducing political polarization about the value of climate solutions.
Similarly, messages that focus on the health harms of fossil fuels and air pollution have also been shown to increase public understanding of these issues, support for clean energy, and intentions to advocate for solutions ( 39 , 42 – 44 ). In communication research focused specifically on climate change, messages about poor air quality are the most compelling form of climate change-related health harm ( 37 , 39 ). Furthermore, one study suggested that air pollution messages may be more effective than climate change messages in building support for clean energy policies ( 44 ). Moreover, messages about the neurological harms of air pollution on babies (including before birth) and children are of particular concern to people ( 42 ). Other research shows that presenting information about policies aimed at reducing air pollution, as opposed to those aimed at addressing climate change outright, may increase Republican support for such policies ( 45 ). Health-oriented messages may be a more compelling reason to reduce fossil fuel use among conservatives compared to climate-oriented messages, which are more compelling among liberals ( 46 ).
Among Americans, people's understanding of climate change as a health issue is associated with their broader climate attitudes and beliefs ( 34 ). Prior research with Americans identified a spectrum of six distinct audiences, also known as Global Warming's Six Americas, 1 ranging from the Alarmed (i.e., those who are very worried and engaged with climate change) to the Dismissive (i.e., those who do not believe in the reality of climate change and rather likely consider it a hoax). When looking at how Americans' understanding of climate and health changed over the period from 2014 to 2020, the understanding increased among four of the six segments—the Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, and Disengaged—while little or no change occurred among the two most climate-skeptical groups, the Doubtful and Dismissive ( 34 ).
Well-crafted messages can only be successful if delivered by trusted sources who are effective communicators. In April 2022, nearly seven in 10 (69%) U.S. voters said they trust their primary care doctor as a source of information about global warming; relative to most other sources, Republicans were especially likely to trust their primary care doctor as a source of global warming information ( 47 ). This role as a trusted communicator may allow health professionals to communicate effectively about topics that otherwise may be perceived as controversial. For instance, one study demonstrated that calling-out opponents of climate change did not diminish health professionals' credibility as a source of information about climate change; in fact, it led to greater trust in health professionals ( 40 ).
In addition to being trusted, health professionals also have many relevant skills and knowledge as well as many opportunities to be effective communicators on climate and health ( 31 ). Because of this, health professionals and health organizations are increasingly being called upon to educate and engage the public and push for climate-friendly policies and actions ( 48 , 49 ).
Internationally, many health professionals are concerned about climate and health and would like to see strong climate policies enacted. Many, however, feel they lack the knowledge, time, or peer support to effectively educate the public and policymakers about the issues ( 50 – 54 ). These research insights help design strategies to educate and activate health professionals as climate advocates.
In a 2020 multinational survey of health professionals, most participants expressed the view that health professionals have a responsibility to bring the health impacts of climate change to the attention of the public (86%) and policymakers (90%), and about one-fourth (26%) were willing to participate in a global advocacy campaign to encourage world leaders to implement climate and health solutions ( 50 ). Interviews with hospital employees also demonstrated that health professionals are receptive to climate and health information and may be willing to advocate for solutions in their hospitals ( 55 ). Other studies asked members of specific medical societies—including the American Thoracic Society, the National Medical Association, and the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology—similar questions and found similar results, with majorities of members indicating that health professionals should be playing a role in responding to climate change and educating the public ( 52 – 54 ). Feeling a sense of professional responsibility is related to health professionals' willingness to advocate for climate and health solutions ( 56 ).
While research shows that many health professionals are ready and willing to act as climate and health communicators and advocates, the barriers they face must be addressed to translate this willingness into action. Luong et al. ( 51 ) separated these barriers into three categories: (1) skills and abilities (i.e., knowledge, communication ability, and resource access); (2) environmental constraints (i.e., time constraints and leadership support); and (3) intentions (i.e., perceptions of advocacy's risks/benefits, effectiveness, and social acceptability). Some ways to address these barriers include continuing professional education and communication training; providing resources such as patient education materials and policy statements; demonstrating how to make healthcare workplaces climate-friendly; promoting workplace policies and professional cultures that are supportive of advocacy; and highlighting successful advocacy efforts and outcomes ( 50 , 51 ).
There are several limitations of our review and areas for future research. First, there is currently not enough research to conduct a quantitative meta-analysis of this literature. Second, our overviews of the health harms of climate change and climate and health solutions are not comprehensive, as their purpose was to set the stage for the larger discussion of social science research on climate and health communication. Other resources can provide much more detail on these points [see IPCC ( 3 ), USGCRP ( 5 ), Romanello et al. ( 6 )]. Third, much of the research to date has been conducted in the United States, and therefore, our review is U.S.-centric. Future research should seek to explore public perceptions of climate change as a human health issue and test the effectiveness of different climate and health messaging strategies in other countries. Fourth, there is minimal research focused on effective communication with the populations most vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change; this gap should be remedied to better understand how to support these communities. Finally, much of the research on health professionals as climate and health communicators is based solely on cross-sectional survey data. Future research should investigate messaging and behavior change strategies that can effectively engage health professionals in public communication and advocacy for climate and health solutions.
Because fossil fuel use, air pollution, and climate change are causing profound public health harm and changes in public policy are needed to prevent these harms from escalating, building public and political will for equitable climate and health solutions is a public health imperative. Current research demonstrates avenues for effective communication strategies to engage the public with climate and health topics, though it is important to note that simply providing the public with information does not directly bring about social and societal changes. Public will can help drive political will by making support for pro-climate policies and actions visible to those in positions to effect change. But, for substantive actions to be born out of this public will, trusted stakeholders (including health professionals, scientists, and others) must engage in productive collaborations with those in positions of power—including policymakers and other government officials, industries, corporations, and the news media—to translate public support into effective policies and actions.
While the communication strategies and messages outlined in this review are a starting point, future research should continue to explore (1) how to activate and support health professionals in their climate communication and advocacy efforts, including refining message strategies that have the most potential to create enduring public and political will for policies that protect human health and our climate and (2) how to facilitate the collaborations necessary for large-scale action. Social science research will continue to play an important role in addressing this imperative, and we encourage social science students and social scientists to join this effort. We also encourage health students, health professionals, and others working to protect human health to use their trusted voices to educate the public and policymakers about the health relevance of climate change and the health opportunities inherent in climate solutions. Now is the time to act together in defense of human health and the climate on which we all depend.
EC: project administration, writing—original draft preparation, and writing—reviewing and editing. SU, JK, and EM: writing—reviewing and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
The publication of this article was funded in part by the George Mason University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund.
1 For more information on Global Warming's Six Americas, see: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/ .
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.
Latest research and reviews.
Understanding the psychological factors related to the spread of conspiracy theories online is crucial. Here, the authors find that older age, self-rated political leaning, belief in false information, and confidence in spotting misinformation are factors associated with spreading conspiracy theories online.
Humans must be represented within digital twins of the Earth, but they also play a role outside to govern development and access and guide usage, argues a perspective based on interdisciplinary scientific expert viewpoints.
An analysis of five million climate-themed social-media posts identified four distinct spikes in climate change misinformation, using a two-step hierarchical model in machine learning.
Media literacy tips promoting trust in true news, skepticism of false news, or a mix of both, were all effective in improving discernment between true and false news stories relative to a control condition without tips.
In a randomized controlled trial involving 2,185 participants, patient satisfaction was improved during interactions with receptionist nurses when assisted by a large language model, with significant reductions in negative emotions and repeated questions.
People in the Global South have stronger hope but broader concerns about solar geoengineering than in the Global North; both regions support multilateral coordination and public engagement but are skeptical about effectiveness, according to an analysis of survey data and focus groups in 22 countries.
Many researchers describe public outreach as a labour of love, often carried out in their spare time. But some funders reward these activities.
Astrobiologist and writer Seven Rasmussen reflects on the craft and complexities of being a scientist-storyteller.
Science communication often assumes a ‘deficit’ in knowledge on behalf of the recipient, but this deficit-based approach is inequitable and ineffective. We must train all STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students in inclusive science communication, which uses collaboration with diverse people to address misinformation and solve socioscientific issues.
Tomasz Głowacki was new to industry when his manager helped him to craft an action plan that captured his goals and the skills needed to achieve them.
Lab money management is an important, yet overlooked, professional skill for researchers.
Four strategies to motivate and inspire your team.
Transformational leaders are exceptional communicators. In this piece, the author outlines four communication strategies to help motivate and inspire your team: 1) Use short words to talk about hard things. 2) Choose sticky metaphors to reinforce key concepts. 3) Humanize data to create value. 4). Make mission your mantra to align teams.
In the age of knowledge, ideas are the foundation of success in almost every field. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t persuade anyone else to follow your vision, your influence and impact will be greatly diminished. And that’s why communication is no longer considered a “soft skill” among the world’s top business leaders. Leaders who reach the top do not simply pay lip service to the importance of effective communication. Instead, they study the art in all its forms — writing, speaking, presenting — and constantly strive to improve on those skills.
Supercharge Your Presence
This content is disabled due to your privacy settings. To re-enable, please adjust your cookie preferences.
By using inclusive language, you can help create respectful and welcoming communications that impact more people.
This presentation covers:
This program does not offer CE credit.
Vanessa Hintz, PsyD
A licensed clinical psychologist, workshop leader, and keynote speaker. She currently serves as the senior director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Engagement and Outreach for the American Psychological Association. In her career, Hintz has worked in various clinical settings with children, adolescents, and adults with a wide array of presenting issues. She is an active proponent of multicultural practice and theory and works dynamically to understand how individuals make meaning of the world within their various cultural contexts. Hintz is also a self-proclaimed "Psych Geek," and incorporates elements of popular culture into her work when beneficial. Hintz has engaged with practitioners and scholars in the fields of academia, consultation, and training, utilizing expertise in psychology and human behavior to provide insights focused on principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Learn how to become a public speaker as a mental health professional.
March 2019 On Demand Webinar
Learn about creating excellent content and web-friendly writing techniques and formatting.
December 2018 On Demand Webinar
Learn about search engine optimization, what is it and how do you find SEO success when you're not super tech-savvy.
October 2018 On Demand Webinar
Learn about options for designing and hosting as website as well as basic web design principles.
September 2018 On Demand Webinar
The ability to critically evaluate scientific literature is crucial for graduate students as they start their careers in science.
However, a lack of systematic training can hamper students’ future ability to review the work of others in their field.
“Reviewing scientific literature and analyzing literature is a huge part of graduate student education,” says Sarah Klass , a postdoctoral fellow in the Keasling Lab at UC Berkeley and the Joint Bioenergy Institute and the lead recipient of a $499,992, two-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). “But there’s no formal education” on how to do it, Klass continues.
To attempt to remedy this disconnection, Klass and her partners will use the NSF grant to fund a new curriculum that will immerse graduate students in the sciences in the “principles and practices of peer review and science communication with a heavy emphasis on building practical skills.” Peer review is the system in which multiple experts review scientific papers to ensure quality before publication.
The team will spend the first year developing a curriculum. The second year, UC Berkeley grad students will put it to the test. The grant team, which will also include UC Berkeley School of Public Health professor Stefano M. Bertozzi and a to-be-determined team of UC Berkeley graduate students, will collect data on impact and effectiveness.
The proposed curriculum builds upon the success that the journal Rapid Reviews\Infectious Diseases ( RR\ID ) has had in making rigorous peer review faster and more efficient, partially by training UC Berkeley undergraduate students. RR\ID is an open-access journal that prioritizes rapid and efficient peer review alongside offering student training and mentoring and supporting the democratization of academic publishing through partnerships with a dozen academic institutions in low- and middle-income countries that will be established over the next three years. Bertozzi is the journal’s editor-in-chief
“As part of UC Berkeley Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program, RR\ID editors have offered a workshop allowing undergraduates to participate in research projects with faculty members for academic credit, focusing on topics of special interest,” the grant application reads. “The aim is to familiarize undergraduate students with contemporary scientific and academic research, peer review processes, and publication standards, particularly concerning infectious diseases.”
The new curriculum project will pilot a curriculum for a training program that will initially involve STEM graduate students enrolled at UC Berkeley, specializing in a broad spectrum of fields related to infectious diseases, data science, public health, engineering, and basic biological and chemical sciences. “By providing graduate students with the necessary tools and insights to critically evaluate scientific literature and review preprints, our goal is to improve graduate student research/literature comprehension and engagement with their respective STEM fields,” the team said.
“We are trying to teach good peer review skills to graduate students so they can help enable the rapid dissemination of scientifically vetted literature that can have an immediate impact on people’s lives,” says Klass.
“Above all, the intellectual discourse that needs to happen around science is closed off and isolated,” says Hildy Fong Baker, executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Global Public Health and managing director of the project. “We are creating an avenue for people to be part of an ecosystem at the beginning of their careers.”
The course materials created during the two-year grant period will eventually be available to all via open access to encourage other institutions to adopt and adapt the curriculum worldwide.
Meet our new faculty: carly strouse, meet our new faculty: xiudi li, alum melissa stafford jones on her career developing meaningful policy approaches in public health, uc berkeley school of public health welcomes inaugural cohort of impact fellows.
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
2.3 Business-Focused Research Topics. 2.4 Social Media Research Topics. 2.5 Mass Communication Research Topics. 2.6 Interpersonal Communication Research Topics. 2.7 Intercultural Communication Research Topics. 2.8 Virtual Communication Research Topics. 2.9 Health-Related Research Topics.
Communication research topics span a wide range of subjects and issues about how people convey information, allowing you to make unique discoveries about human behavior. If you learn more information about communication research topics, you can often better write a successful research paper that leads to a job in your area of study. ...
Latest Communication Topic For Research. The role of persuasive dialogue in negotiations. Why everyone must learn proper expression strategies. Effects of emoji and other characters in enhancing textual conversations. The role of propaganda in shaping communication tones.
A comprehensive list of communication-related research topics. Includes 100% free access to a webinar and research topic evaluator. Who We Are; What We Do. 1-On-1 Coaching ... (Kakepoto et al., 2022) Communication Skills among University Students (Ansari et al., 2022). The Management of Communication Skills Development in Literature High ...
List of Communication Research Paper Topics. Simple Communication Research Topics. Mass Communication Research Paper Topics. Communication Research Topics on Social Media. Business Communication Research Topics. Interpersonal Communication Research Ideas. Virtual Communication Research Topics.
April 23, 2022. Communication students usually face two problems when it comes to research. The first is identifying compelling communication research topics. The second is crafting appropriate communication research questions that are specific and relevant. ... It also lists 10 interesting examples of communication research topics you can ...
Chung-hong Chan (PhD, University of Hong Kong 2017; ORCID: 0000-0002-6232-7530) is a research associate at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). He is a trained epidemiologist but with strong interest in media studies. His research interests include online opinion polarization, online radicalization, and platform interventions.
Empowering Democracy in the Digital Age: Navigating the Challenges and Potential of Digital Activism. A cross-disciplinary journal that advances our understanding of the global communication revolution and its relevance across social, economic and cultural spheres.
To advance a fuller understanding of how organizations select partners, this study examines the roles ... Available access Research article First published October 15, 2021 pp. 733-759. xml PDF / EPUB. Table of contents for Communication Research, 49, 5, Jul 01, 2022.
Top 10 Research Topics from 2022. Find the answers to your biggest research questions from 2022. With collective views of over 3.2 million, researchers explored topics spanning from vaccine safety and psychedelic therapy to quaternary fossils and antiviral plants.
This editorial initiative, led by Prof. Rukhsana Ahmed and Prof. Mohan Dutta, Specialty Chief Editors of the Health Communication section, is focused on new insights, novel developments, current challenges, recent advances, and future perspectives in the field of health communication. The Research Topic solicits brief, forward-looking ...
The presented health communication research agenda will hopefully serve as a guide for researchers to move forward towards a new era where the current knowledge gaps can be filled up and a better, evidence-based understanding of health communication can pave the way for significant improvements in the care of patients. Recommended articles.
Communication Research (CR), peer-reviewed and published bi-monthly, has provided researchers and practitioners with the most up-to-date, comprehensive and important research on communication and its related fields.It publishes articles that explore the processes, antecedents, and consequences of communication in a broad range of societal systems.
People who seem like they're paying attention often aren't—even when they're smiling and nodding toward the speaker. Research by Alison Wood Brooks, Hanne Collins, and colleagues reveals just how prone the mind is to wandering, and sheds light on ways to stay tuned in to the conversation. 31 Oct 2023. HBS Case.
Communication Studies SBA Topics 2022-2023 - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. The document outlines 24 different themes related to social issues in the Caribbean. The themes include topics like brain drain in Jamaica, the impact of father absenteeism on children, the effects of Covid-19 on Jamaica's education system, the impact of natural disasters on ...
In this review, we briefly discuss the human health harms of climate change, climate and health solutions, and provide a thorough synthesis of social science research on climate and health communication. Through our review, we found that social science research provides an evidence-based foundation for messaging strategies that can build public ...
Unintended consequences of using maps to communicate sea-level rise. Getting coastal residents to understand the risk of rising sea levels can be difficult. This study finds that showing ...
Science Communication in Difficult Times: The Intersectionality of Science Communication and Risk Communication during Disasters and Crises. Explores human communication and its various intersections with the natural world, focusing on how humans impact and are impacted by Earth's natural systems.
November 23, 2022 master1305/Getty Images. Post. Post. Share. Annotate. Save. Get PDF. Buy Copies. ... Read more on Business communication or related topics Business writing ...
By using inclusive language, you can help create respectful and welcoming communications that impact more people. This presentation covers: Strategies for promoting psychologically safe, inclusive, respectful, and welcoming environments during presentations and public speaking engagements.
Navigation and communication technologies for the new era of Lunar space missions. An innovative journal that explores the critical branches of contemporary telecommunications in our hyper-connected world, from the physical layer to cross-layer and networking design, performance ...
Little research has examined how descriptive norm information manifests in media and impacts beliefs in the real world. Previously, using automated ... Restricted access Research article First published March 27, 2022 pp. 717-742. xml Get Access. Table of contents for Communication Research, 51, 6, Aug 01, 2024.
More than 75 years of transformational research and hands-on social impact for a better world. ... Half million dollar grant to create novel peer review and science communication curriculum for grad students. ... focusing on topics of special interest," the grant application reads. "The aim is to familiarize undergraduate students with ...
The Creation and Impact of Visual Narratives for Science and Health Communication. Paige Brown Jarreau. Joana Magalhães. António Fernando Coelho. 45,484 views. 9 articles. Explores the work visual representations do, considering the visualization of society and visual representations in relation to other forms of communication.