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Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry

Climate Change sustainability and health ..

Guest Lecture 

Professor Sir Andy Haines

The concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising to levels unprecedented in human history. The impacts on climate are already being felt and major changes will take place in the global climate over coming decades. This lecture will give an overview of the many threats to health posed by climate change and discuss the potential for populations to adapt to a changed climate. Deep cuts in emissions are needed to prevent dangerous consequences arising from climate change. However many of the policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will, in themselves, have beneficial effects on human health and the lecture will discuss how a low carbon economy can improve health and at the same time address climate goals.

Professor Haines' biography

Andy Haines was Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine for nearly 10 years until October 2010 and continues to work there as Professor of Public Health and Primary Care. He was previously Professor of Primary Health Care and Director of the Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences at UCL. He was formerly Director of Research & Development at the National Health Service (NHS) Executive, North Thames. 

He has also worked internationally including in Nepal, Jamaica and the USA. His research interests are in epidemiology and health services research. He was a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the second and third Assessment Reports in 1996 and 2001 and is review editor for the health chapter in the report of WG 2 in the fifth assessment exercise. 

He sits on many national and international committees including the Strategy Board of the Medical Research Council and chairs the MRC Global Health Group. 

He chaired the Task Force on Climate Change Mitigation and Public Health which was supported by a consortium of funding bodies led by the Wellcome Trust to provide estimates of the public health impacts of climate change mitigation strategies in the electricity generation, household energy, transport and food/agriculture sectors. These were published as a series of articles in the Lancet in 2009.

More about Professor Haines

Times and location

This lecture took place on 10 May 2011 in the Perrin Lecture Theatre; Whitechapel Campus

Podcast

Length: approx 54 minutes

Watch full Echo360 presentation of ''Climate Change sustainability and health'' (video of lecture and slides)[requires Flash player]

Alternative media

This lecture was recorded using Q-Review; the Queen Mary, University of London lecture capture system. This is available for use by any member of the university.

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