Elly Vaughan: The climate-health nexus between pollen and heatwaves
The interplay between climate change, air quality and lung health is a key issue that requires innovative approaches and solutions. “It’s not just what the empirical evidence is telling us about different particle concentration levels in the air but how people are perceiving air quality,” says health policy expert at Economist Impact Elly Vaughan.
As climate change and pollution continue to impact people’s lives, a recent report by Economist Impact, an arm of The Economist Group, delves into the complex links between air quality, health inequalities and lung health.
Drawing on a survey of 500 people from five Western European countries (EU5) — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK — and an extensive literature review, the report sheds light on how people with lung conditions perceive air quality, revealing that not all is as it may seem.
From people with lung conditions perceiving air quality as having deteriorated over the last five years — in contrast to primary air quality metrics — to climate change related factors such as heatwaves and pollen ranking high on the list of their worries, the report opens the door for a more holistic understanding of air quality with implications for policy makers and researchers alike.
We interviewed Elly Vaughan, Senior Global Health Manager, Health Policy & Insights Economist Impact and co-author of the study, to dig deeper into the report, the policy suggestions that can be drawn from it and the implications it has for future research.
“We need to broaden the way we think about air quality beyond a narrow view of what we can and have been measuring so far,” Elly Vaughan.
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