ACDI Seminar with Dr Caradee Wright - 26 Feb 2025
The inaugural session for the ACDI Monthly Seminar Series, a new series designed to showcase interesting and relevant topics in climate change and development. These seminars will feature experts sharing insights on critical issues at the intersection of research, policy, and practice.
For our first session, we welcomed Dr Caradee Wright, Chief Specialist Scientist at the South African Medical Research Council. Dr Wright leads the Climate Change and Human Health Research Programme, focusing on the impacts of climate change on public health and strategies for adaptation and resilience (see full bio below).
Abstract: Climate change is a grave threat to human health and wellbeing. Adaptation is one mechanism (the other is mitigation) by which we can intervene to increase adaptive capacity and preparedness to protect people. Adaptation interventions are being conducted around the world. However, existing conceptual frameworks to assess the effectiveness of these interventions, especially with respect to improving health outcomes and systems, are not readily applied in areas where these are needed. This is applicable to both interventions intended to improve health as well as those without a health-focus, but with potential health co-benefits. To address this gap, we conducted a multi-vocal review comprised of a scoping review and key informant interviews to develop an initial assessment framework. We included 21 academic articles and 12 reports (from the grey literature) for data collation and synthesis. Of the 21 articles analyzed, only seven presented primary evidence of health improvement outcomes, such a reduction in neo-natal care unit (NICU) admissions was partially attributed to moving the maternity ward to the cooler lower floor of the hospital. From the 10 interviewees, we learnt that most existing tools to assess the effectiveness of adaptation are for use at only country or regional scales (e.g., Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative Index) and none focused specifically on health / health co-benefits. From these learnings, together with a guiding concept, we crafted the first iteration of an assessment framework, SCALE-up, comprising six steps that prompt a researcher to consider the effectiveness of their adaptation intervention at a project-scale, including from a health benefit perspective. We apply the framework in four scenarios: hot days-heat; floods; droughts; and vector-borne diseases, to illustrate how the framework may help guide the researcher to think about effectiveness from project proposal stage. The next steps are to implement and pilot the framework in the four proposed scenarios and refine the framework.
Presenter Bio: Caradee Wright (PhD in Preventive and Social Medicine) is a Chief Specialist Scientist at the South African Medical Research Council leading the Climate and Health Research Programme. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pretoria and the University of Johannesburg. Her research is in environmental health epidemiology to understand climate change and air pollution impacts on human health and well-being to inform adaptation, interventions and policy development in Africa. Her research fields also include solar ultraviolet radiation dosimetry and skin cancer prevention. Dr Wright has published more than 200 research articles in peer-reviewed accredited journals. Dr Wright was a member of the World Health Organization Air Quality Guidelines Committee, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 6 Africa Chapter Author, and Chapter Lead Author of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) / Stockholm Environment Institute African Assessment on Climate Change and Human Health. Dr Wright is currently Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization (Air Quality, and Ethics), the International Livestock Research Institute (One Health), and the Health Effects Institute (Global Health Oversight Committee); the Clean Air Fund (Grants and Charitable Activities Committee); and a Review Lead for the National Institute of Health (NIH) / Nature Journal Collection on Data Science for Health in Africa (Environmental Health / Climate Change). Dr Wright was named as one of the 2024 NIH Climate and Health Scholars and worked with the Fogarty International Centre
