A new scoping review published in the Lancet Planetary Health from authors at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania and Deakin University on the co-benefits of climate change mitigation in terms of health. Interestingly, most of the articles in their review that reported health co-benefits were published in environmental science journals, rather than health focused journals. The article calls on health economists and public health researchers to engage with this literature and to move toward comprehensive models of short and long term benefits that might accrue from climate mitigation policies.
Another Lancet publication (this time in the Lancet Oncology). Led by Katie Lichter from the GreenHealth Lab at the University of California San Francisco, this study sought to quantify the emissions of radiotherapy (specifically EBRT) as treatment for cancer patients using a lifecycle assessment approach. This approach appears to be far more comprehensive than previous efforts to do similar. A really great aspect of this study is that it gets granular and breaks down emissions by cancer type (for example), as well as breaking down the emissions (including projections under alternative scenarios). Definitely important work and worth a read!