Climate Change and Human Health Impacts in the United States: An Update on the Results of the U.S. National Assessment

Ebi, Kristie L.; Mills, David M.; Smith, Joel B.; Grambsch, Anne

In this update we focused on reviewing publications since the HSA that were concerned directly with the potential health impacts of climate variability and change in the United States, along with publications that provided information on implemented adaptation measures. We generally focused on publications that specifically addressed the health outcomes of interest in the United States to limit sources of uncertainty that would need to be accounted for in drawing conclusions (e.g., relevance of results from Europe to the United States). Exceptions were made if no comparable U.S. study was identified for a health outcome of interest. We identified relevant reports and publications from electronic reference databases using combinations of key words developed from the health outcome categories, limited by date. The following databases were searched: Medline (www.nlm.nih.gov), Biosis (www.biosis.org), Social Sciences Index (scientific.thomson.com/products/ssci), Enviroline (library.diolog.com/bluesheets/ html/b10040.html), and Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts (www2.lib.udel. edu/database/mga.html). We filtered the results of individual searches using a series of Boolean pairings to identify, for example, heat mortality studies published since 1998. The search terms and pairing strategies used to identify the initial pool of literature are summarized in Table 1 .