More than warming: Climate change as an emerging health crisis

作者：Zhengyu Yang, Wenzhong Huang, Rongbin Xu, Yuming Guo, Shanshan Li · 发表于：The Innovation Medicine · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.59717/j.xinn-med.2026.100206 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Climate Change and Health Impacts、Zoonotic diseases and public health、Science, Research, and Medicine

Climate change is already reshaping the environmental and social systems that sustain health.The 2025 Lancet Countdown shows that beyond rising temperatures, climate change is distorting water availability, weakening food security, degrading air quality, expanding infectious disease risks, and straining health systems. 1 These indirect and interconnected impacts increasingly drive the greatest health burden.Heat should therefore be reviewed not as the primary crisis, but as a warning signal of broader systemic disruption.We first examine heat as the most visible marker of climate risk, then show how cascading impacts on water, food, disease ecology, and health system resilience together constitute a deeper and more enduring threat to health, as summarized conceptually in Figure 1.