On November 4, 2024, a research team led by Professor Pan Haifeng from the School of Public Health published an original research article, titled Trends in the Burden of Environmental Heat and Cold Exposure among Children and Adolescents, in JAMA Pediatrics (Impact Factor: 24.7), a sub-journal of the highly renowned Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Doctoral student He Yisheng, Associate Professor Wang Peng, and postgraduate student Hu Xiao from the School of Public Health, and Cao Fan from the Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology are credited as co-first authors. Professor Pan serves as the lead corresponding author, alongside co-corresponding author Professor Hou Shengping from Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, and Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology. Anhui Medical University is acknowledged as the first completion institution.
The study addresses a critical public health issue – Environmental Heat and Cold Exposure (EHCE) – which is recognized as a preventable yet significant contributor to the global disease burden and mortality rates among children and adolescents. By employing a repeated cross-sectional study design, the team analyzed data from 204 countries and regions, focusing on individuals aged 0–19 years over the period from 2009 to 2019. The key outcome measures included incidence rate, prevalence rate, mortality rate, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), and their average annual percentage change (AAPC). Furthermore, global trends were analyzed in a stratified manner based on gender, age, sociodemographic index (SDI), regions, and individual countries.
The research findings reveal an alarming increase in the incidence and prevalence of EHCE-related diseases among children and adolescents since 2010, particularly in regions with low SDI values. These results highlight the urgent necessity of addressing health disparities in the context of climate change by prioritizing children and adolescents in underdeveloped and low-resource areas when designing public health interventions and distributing resources. The study provides vital evidence for the creation of targeted, effective public health strategies to combat EHCE-related diseases in this vulnerable population.