Climate change greatly elevates the threats to human health across a wide range of illnesses and injuries, threatening to undermine the last 50 years of public health progress. Mitigation and adaptation actions to combat climate change can bring immense near- and long-term benefits for human health and wellbeing.

The Lancet Countdown project was established in 2016 to develop a global indicator system to track and understand the link between climate change and health. To date, Lancet Countdown is a global network of over 120 leading experts from academic institutions and UN agencies across the globe, bringing together climate scientists, engineers, energy specialists, economists, political scientists, public health professionals, and doctors.​ 

The goal of this research project is to establish an indicator platform to track regional climate and health actions in Georgia, with the vision of expanding its coverage to the Southeast and the entire United States. The anticipated outcome is an operational data platform and associated outreach strategy. We will follow the framework of the Lancet Countdown by establishing five groups of indicators, i.e., health impacts of climate change, health adaptation, health benefits of mitigation, economic context, and political context. The list of indicators will be customized based on regional climate risk factors identified in the US National Climate Assessment, expertise in Emory, and stakeholder and community interests.