We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article, “The evolution of news coverage about climate change as a health issue: A decadal analysis in China, India, and the USA,” in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health.
Climate change harms human health and wellbeing in many ways, while many climate solutions have profound public health benefits. Prior research has illuminated how news media engage with and shape the public’s understanding of climate change. Yet, few studies have examined how news media report on climate change as a public health issue. It is vital to examine news reporting on the topic, as this coverage helps shape public engagement with climate change as a health crisis.
In this article, we assess both the frequency and the framing of newspaper coverage in the world’s three leading carbon-emitting countries—China, India, and the United States. Although our study found some cross-national differences in the prevalence and type of reporting, the most striking finding is how little attention the health implications of climate receive. Despite well-documented links between climate change and health and the demonstrable efficacy of this framing for enhancing public engagement, only a tiny fraction of news coverage connects the two.
Out of 22 million articles published over the past decade in the three countries, just 0.007% focused on climate change as a public health issue. When coverage did occur, articles most often highlighted the health impacts of extreme weather, heat, poor air quality, and food insecurity. Reporting on vulnerable groups, potential solutions to the crisis, and views of health experts were much less frequent.
Our findings reinforce previous research on the underrepresentation of the health frame in climate journalism and offer valuable insights into how this gap may hinder public understanding and urgency regarding climate-related health risks.
These and other findings can be found in the full open-access article.
On behalf of the research team: Melinda R. Weathers, Western Carolina University; Deepti Ganapathy, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Marceleen M. Mosher, University of Minnesota; Teresa Myers, Neha Gour, John Kotcher, and Edward W. Maibach of George Mason University; Mulin Jiang, Qianying Ye, and Fei ‘Chris’ Shen of City University of Hong Kong