Tackling Climate Change: The European Environment and Epidemiology Network

The predicament of climate change calls for concerted public health action. In Europe the incidence, prevalence, and distribution of vector-, rodent-, water-, and food-borne infections are expected to shift in a changing environment. Due to the high level of uncertainty on the rate and speed of climate change and its impact on infectious diseases, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), a new public health agency in Europe, has mounted a proactive public health response by building an integrated network for environmental and epidemiological data. The blueprint of such a European Environment and Epidemiology (E3) Network has been designed and integrated into the IT landscape of ECDC. It will be connected with the mandatory surveillance system of 49 diseases and with epidemic intelligence that monitors threats and outbreaks in Europe and beyond. The E3 Network will have the capacity to connect epidemic intelligence and infectious disease surveillance with meteorological, entomological, water quality, remote sensing, or other data, for multivariate analyses and long-term projections. . It would have to be pilot-tested and validated but could be a distributed, secure, web-based network that would provide timely access to climatic/environmental and infectious disease surveillance data that are collected by a variety sources. Merging, integrating, and analyzing such environmental and epidemiological data will advance our understanding of the relationship between climate change and infectious diseases in Europe and inform public health action.