Asessing Long-term Climatic Change on Mortality Patterns Marginal Communities in Gansu China

China has been the fastest growing economy for the past two decades, and is routinely criticized about how this economic prowess comes at the cost of the health and well-being of its populace. Yet, while NGOs and another countries scrutinize how this rapid industrialization leads to detrimental environmental degradation for the rest of the world, very little attention is given to understanding how long-term changes in environmental conditions jeopardizes the lives the most vulnerable people living in marginalized areas in China’s poor interior provinces. Here, we assess how long-term climatic change impacted mortality for 30 years in poor vulnerable communities in China’s interior; By combining three meteorological measures of mean temperature (T_mean), diurnal temperature range (DTR) and relative humidity (RH) collected daily between Jan 1 1970 to December 31 2009 and death records from Jan 1 2004 to Dec 31 2009 to highlight how climate change impacted mortality patterns amongst vulnerable people living in Jingtai County, Gansu. We used several analytic methods, including distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM) combined with generalized additive model (GAM), a natural cubic spline-natural cubic spline, a double threshold-natural cubic spline, and a high threshold-natural cubic spline to assess non-linear and delayed effects of T_mean, DTR and RH to assess their impact across non-external mortality (D_all), age-specific non-external mortality (<65 (D_0-64), 65-74 (D_65-74), and >75 years (D₇₅₊)), on gender-specific mortality, and cause-specific mortality (circulatory disease (D_c) and respiratory disease (D_r)). We find that In Jingtai, cold temperature, hot temperature, low humidity, high humidity and high DTR were related to increased mortality. Expectantly, young and elderly are adversely impacted by long-term climatic changes. However, our results indicate that women’s mortality patterns are much more susceptible to cold and high humidity, suggesting more research is needed to identify mechanisms and biases that compromise women’s well-being in vulnerable communities.