Climate change and its impact on health

The impact of climate change extends beyond environmental changes – it presents significant challenges to our health, wellbeing and safety.

Extreme weather events, disruptions in food production, and increased disease exposure are just some of the ways climate change directly and indirectly impacts health. 

The Western Public Health Unit (WPHU) has identified climate change and its impact on health as one of three population health priorities for our catchment, as outlined in our Population Health Catchment Plan. Six of eight local governments in the WPHU catchment have identified the health impacts of climate change as a health priority for their work.

To support local level action, we have established the Action for Climate Transformation in the West (ACT-WEST) Action Group, a collective of stakeholders from local government, community health, health services, not for profits and other sectors, working to address the impacts of climate change on the health and wellbeing of communities in Melbourne’s central and western suburbs. For more information on ACT-WEST, click here.

Together with our catchment partners, we are working towards a healthier, more climate resilient future.

Focus areas

To address the health impacts of climate change in Melbourne’s central and western suburbs our work portfolio is still developing. To date our work has considered the following areas of action: