Climate Change and Cancer

Climate change is an environmental and public health threat with implications across the cancer control continuum. Climate change-fueled events increase exposures to cancer risk factors, reduce food access and nutritional quality, impede health behaviors, and disrupt cancer care delivery. Populations disproportionately burdened by cancer are also those at greatest risk of harm from these changes. The impacts of climate change on cancer outcomes are complex, requiring multilevel interventions.

Climate change increases exposure to cancer risk factors by negatively affecting air and food quality and increasing both water pollution and sun and heat exposure.

Scientific Priorities

Expand and enhance research to understand and mitigate the effects of environmental risk factors and disruptions to care resulting from climate change.

Strategies

Develop novel measures to enable more precise, accurate measurement and novel methods to model exposures and risks of climate change and to test intervention strategies.
Support research on the effects of climate change events on cancer risk, care, and survivors and lifetime exposure research to study the cumulative effects of single or multiple exposures.
Identify research infrastructure needs and data resources and linkages that will allow rapid development and support testing of sustainable and climate-responsive interventions.
Develop and implement routine surveillance of the impact of climate-related events on cancer-related exposures, health behaviors, healthcare delivery, and cancer outcomes.
Identify cumulative exposures in environmental justice communities and best practices to reduce these exposures using community-engaged approaches.
Achieve better collaboration and coordination within DCCPS, across NCI and NIH, and with other federal partners on climate change activities.