In preparation for the next report from the Lancet Countdown in Europe, we have opened a call for contributions to the development of new indicators to monitor the connections between health and climate change in Europe.

To support this process, Lancet Countdown in Europe hosted an open webinar, with a brief introduction to our scope of work, indicator criteria, and the process of indicator development. Watch the webinar back below:

What is a Lancet Countdown indicator?

The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change in Europe is an international research collaboration, using indicators to provide an overview of the relationship between public health and climate change. The Lancet Countdown tracks the world’s response to climate change, and the health benefits that emerge from this transition. Each year, a report is produced to provide sound scientific evidence in the field, coupled with policy engagement and strategic communication, which have become increasingly influential. 

Indicators developed for the Lancet Countdown in Europe Report must meet the following criteria:

• Meaningful: The indicator should track an aspect of both climate change and health, particularly focusing on the relationship between these two. There should be a high standard of evidence of this relationship documented in the scientific literature.
• Relevant: The area being tracked by the indicator should be of relevance to policy and decision makers, and/or represent an important contribution in the knowledge and development of climate change and health as a field of science.
• Scientifically sound and reproducible: The indicator should use a well-established, internationally accepted, and published scientific method to track the relevant aspect of climate change and health. Methodologies should be clearly laid out, and statistical analysis of the data should be carried out to support the interpretation of the data whenever applicable.
• Temporally representative: The indicator should provide annual data for the recent past and to a year as recent as possible. It should be available across an adequate timescale to allow for attribution to climate change where relevant.
• Geographically representative: Indicators for the LCDE main indicator report must be available for the European Region at the finest level of resolution (i.e., sub-national, NUTS, gridded). The Lancet Countdown in Europe aims to include the 38 European Environment Agency member and cooperating countries and the United Kingdom – with the aim to expand geographic reach to the 53 World Health Organization Europe member countries. Note, high quality indicators covering fewer countries will also be considered. As a new initiative, indicators are being developed for a special report at the urban scale. Indicators for the special report must be available at the city-level (individual cities with an urban centre of at least 50 000 inhabitants, according to the EU Urban Audit) or finer  (household, neighbourhood).
• Reliable and updatable sources: The indicator should use data from a reliable source, and fit for its purpose. Publicly available datasets, and especially those developed by international organisations, governmental bodies or academic institutions, are preferred. Private datasets or datasets with unclear or biased methodologies for data collection should be avoided whenever possible. Data sources must be regularly kept up to date, ideally allowing for annual updating of the indicator.

Priority areas for indicator development

The Lancet Countdown in Europe have identified the following priority areas for indicator development:

• Adaptation, planning, and resilience for health
• Mitigation (i.e. Healthy, low-carbon travel, active travel)
• Economics and finance
• Indicators for European cities

Next steps

If you would like to propose a new indicator to the Lancet Countdown Europe report. Make sure you identify the working group (WG) where the indicator would fit (see Panel in the 2024 indicator report), and that the indicators corresponds to the indicator criteria’s discussed in the webinar. Pitch you’re idea of an indicator to the corresponding  WG lead by clearly describing how this indicator addresses climate change and health interaction and how the indicator criteria’s are fulfilled.

WG1 Climate Health impacts, exposures and vulnerabilities: Prof. Joacim Rocklöv (joacim.rockloev@uni-Heidelberg.de)
WG2 Adaptation, planning, and resilience for health: Prof. Jan Semenza (jan.semenza@lateralPHC.com)
WG3 Mitigation actions and health co-benefits: Prof. Cathryn Tonne (cathyn.tonne@isglobal.org)
WG4 Economics and finance: Prof. Anil Markandya (anil.markandya@bc3research.org)
WG5 Public and political engagement: Prof. Slava Jankin (v.jankin@bham.ac.uk) and Prof. Niheer Dasandi (n.dasani@bham.ac.uk)

If you have any questions or require further information, reach out to us. For the full report: Hedi Kriit ( hedi.kriit@uni-heidelberg.de), and for the urban scale report: José Chen jose.chen@isglobal.org.

Indicator White Papers must be submitted by 17 January 2025.