EPA research and assessment activities on climate change and human health

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)was established by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The goal of the Program is to enhance understanding of natural and human-induced changes in the Earth's global environmental systems: to monitor, understand, and predict global change; and to provide a sound scientific basis for national and international decision making. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), which incorporates the USGCRP, was launched in February 2002 as a collaborative interagency program, under a new cabinet-level organization designed to improve the government wide management of climate science.

One of the requirements of the 1990 Act is the development of periodic assessments of the effects of global change on the natural envionment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity. Ms.Grambsch will describe the U.S. research program and EPA's involvement in this continuing effort. She will detail the development of the Health Sector Assessment, part of the first National Assessment completed in 2001, that motivated EPA's support of the studies described in this session. Ms. Grambsch will also discuss Synthesis and Assessment Product (SAP) 4.6: Analyses of the effects of global change on human health and welfare and human systems. SAP 4.6 will provide an update to the 2000 Health Sector Assessment while exploring new ground through analyses of the prevention, control, and treatment strategies that may be applied to the potential health impacts of climate change.