Measuring and valuing the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation: a scoping review

Abstract

Despite growing interest in the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation actions, there is little recent evidence on the appropriateness of the measurement techniques being used to estimate them. We did a scoping review to identify the different approaches that have been used to measure and value health co-benefits in the climate change mitigation literature. We searched three databases (EBSCOhost, Web of Science, and MEDLINE Ovid) to identify relevant papers published between 2010 and 2023, and identified 267 studies that met our inclusion criteria to be included in the review. We found that health co-benefit studies are more typically published in the environmental science literature than in health journals. Despite calls going back many years for greater standardisation in methods, we found a highly diverse set of health measures and valuation approaches still in use. The majority of studies (232 [87%]) measured only near-term health co-benefits from reduced air pollution, and only 13 (5%) studies incorporated the longer term health benefits from mitigating the future health harms of climate change. Just over half the studies included monetary valuation of health co-benefits, using a variety of valuation approaches. Public and planetary health researchers, epidemiologists, and health economists should seek to engage more actively with those undertaking research in health co-benefits. This would allow consideration of how best to reconcile differing perspectives and techniques, how to achieve better standardisation of measurement and valuation, and how to extend the generally narrow focus of current health co-benefit studies to become more holistic and comprehensive.