Climate change and health within the South African context: A thematic content analysis study of climate change and health expert interviews

African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Climate change and health within the South African context: A thematic content analysis study of climate change and health expert interviews
 
Creator dos Santos, Monika John, Juanette Garland, Rebecca Palakatsela, Romeo Banos, Arnaud Martens, Pim Nemukula, Bono Ramathuba, Murdock Nkohla, Faith Lenyibi, Keobakile
 
Subject Public health; climate change; climate and environment psychology; health systems strengthening climate change; health; South Africa; climate change and health expert interviews; sustainable development; healthcare systems strengthening
Description Background: Climate change presents an unprecedented and urgent threat to human health and survival. South Africa’s health response will require a strong and effective intersectoral organisational effort.Aim: Exploratory interview outcomes are used to advance practice and policy recommendations, as well as for broad input in the development of a draft national framework for a health risk and vulnerability assessment (RVA) for national departments.Setting: Nationally in South Africa.Method: Twenty key expert interviews were conducted with South African experts in the field of climate change and health. Interview data was analysed by means of thematic content analysis.Results: Findings suggest that previously poor communities are most at risk to the impacts of climate change on health, as well as those with underlying medical conditions. Climate change may also serve as a catalyst for improving the healthcare system overall and should serve as the conduit to do so. A draft climate change and health RVA should take into account existing frameworks and should be implemented by local government. It is also critical that the health and health system impacts from climate change are well understood, especially in light of the plans to implement the (South African) National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme.Conclusion: Practice and policy initiatives should be holistic in nature. Consideration should be given to forming a South African National Department of Climate Change, or a similar coordinating body between the various national departments in South Africa, as health intercepts with all other domains within the climate change field.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
Date 2022-03-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitivative; purposive sampling; content analysis
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/phcfm.v14i1.3203
 
Source African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine; Vol 14, No 1 (2022); 12 pages 2071-2936 2071-2928
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/3203/5280 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/3203/5281 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/3203/5282 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/3203/5283 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/downloadSuppFile/3203/6314
 
Coverage South Africa 2019-2020 South African experts in the field of climate change and health
Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Monika dos Santos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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