When people think about health, they generally think about things individuals can do to ward off disease — seeing a doctor, taking medicine, or dieting.
But increasingly, many health experts think this mindset needs to change. When we think about health, they say, we need to start thinking about how environmental factors can matter as much as — maybe even more than — any personal behaviors. And that includes big things like climate change:
The direct and indirect effects of climate change on health and well-being.
In a big new report released Monday, The Lancet brought together the world’s leading experts on environmental health. They argue that “[t]he implications of climate change for a global population of 9 billion people threatens to undermine the last half century of gains in development and global health”: