Health in the Social Cost of Carbon: Recent Advances to Fill a Critical Gap

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. ET
via Zoom

We were pleased to invite you to join the Insitute for International Economic Policy, the Climate and Health Institute, and the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health for a panel discussing “Health in the Social Cost of Carbon: Recent Advances to Fill a Critical Gap.” This event featured speakers Kevin Cromar of NYU, Noah Scovronick of Emory University, and Tamma Carleton of UCSB. IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh provided welcoming remarks, and Climate and Health Institute Director Susan Anenberg moderated the discussion.

The social cost of carbon is commonly used in regulatory cost-benefit analysis to characterize the economic damage that would result from each ton of carbon dioxide emitted. An important cost of greenhouse gas emissions is the profound public health consequences of climate change, including disease and mortality from extreme heat, extreme weather events, worsened air pollution, expanded habitats for disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks, increased aeroallergens, and impacts to water and food supply. Currently, these health consequences are represented in the social cost of carbon in incomplete, indirect, or cursory ways. This panel of leading researchers will describe recent advances to fill this critical gap and ensure that the social cost of carbon adequately reflects the present and future public health burden stemming from a global climate altered by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

About the Speakers:

Kevin Cromar is the Director of the Health, Environment, and Policy Program at the Marron Institute of Urban Management and an Associate Professor of Environmental Medicine and Population Health at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. His research program works at the intersection of scientific research and public policy in order to generate the knowledge needed to improve health and quality of life. He has a BS in Neuroscience from Brigham Young University and an MS and PhD in Environmental Health Science from New York University. 

 

Noah Scovronick is a professor of Environmental Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. His areas of interest include air pollution, climate and health, and environmental health. He has a BS from Emory University, a MS from University of Cape Town, an MS and a PhD from the London School fo Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

 

 

Picture of Tamma CarletonTamma Carleton is a professor of Economics at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara, an affiliate of the Climate Impact Lab, a research associate at the Environmental Markets Lab, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She joined Bren after a postdoc at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. She has a PhD in Agricultural & Resource Economics at UC Berkeley, where she was an EPA STAR Fellow and a Doctoral Fellow in the Global Policy Lab at the Goldman School of Public Policy. She is an environmental and resource economist, focusing on questions at the intersection of environmental change and economic development.

 

About the Moderator:

Susan Anenberg is the Director of the Climate and Health Institute and an Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health and of Global Health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Dr. Anenberg’s research focuses on the health implications of air pollution and climate change, from local to global scales. She currently serves on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, the World Health Organization’s Global Air Pollution and Health Technical Advisory Group, and the National Academy of Science’s Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program. She also serves as Secretary of the GeoHealth section of the American Geophysical Union. Previously, Dr. Anenberg was a Co-Founder and Partner at Environmental Health Analytics, LLC, the Deputy Managing Director for Recommendations at the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an environmental scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a senior advisor for clean cookstove initiatives at the U.S. State Department.

Introductory Remarks:

Jay Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Jay is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Jay taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

The Use of Multidimensional Poverty and Vulnerability Indices in the Context of Health Emergencies

Monday, May 24, 2021
10 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. EDT
via Zoom

Health emergencies pose serious threats to human lives and livelihoods. They also risk exacerbating disadvantages by unequally affecting those who are already worse-off. Identifying how different population subgroups are unequally exposed, susceptible, or vulnerable to diseases, due to social, environmental, and economic implications of health emergencies is vital in developing equitable preparedness, response and recovery measures.

WHO and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) have been collaborating to explore how the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI) and national multidimensional poverty and vulnerability indices (MPIs or MVIs) could be used  in health emergencies, especially in the face of COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economic consequences. This talk provides a brief overview of how MPIs and MVIs can be used in health emergencies to prevent or mitigate the impacts and to prevent exacerbation of pre-existing inequalities and deprivation. It presents four ways of using multidimensional measures in health emergency contexts, drawing examples from recent studies.

The use of multidimensional measures in the context of health emergencies is new, which invites further discussion, study and exploration by wider stakeholder groups.

 

This event and seminar series was jointly organized with the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the UNDP Human Development Report Office.

Meet the Presenter: 

Dr Niluka Wijekoon is a medical epidemiologist. She works in the Emergencies Programme at WHO headquarters in Geneva, in the Department of Health Information Management and Risk Assessment.

Dr Niluka is a technical expert in surveillance, early warning, alert and response in emergency settings. She has started her public health career with the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) as the Emergency Health Coordinator in Sri Lanka, during the ethnic crisis. She has first joined WHO in 2011 as the Officer in Charge (OIC) of WHO’s emergency hub in Vavuniya, Sri Lanka. She has been with WHO headquarters since 2014 and has worked in emergencies and outbreaks around the world, including in Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leon, Guinea, Nigeria, South Sudan, Mozambique, Rohingya crisis is Bangladesh, NE Syria, Yemen, DRC, and Indonesia.  Dr Niluka also manages WHO’s electronic tool for early warning, alert and response named EWARS-in-a-Box, an innovative solution for outbreak detection in emergency settings. 

Before embarking on a public health career, Dr Niluka worked as an emergency physician in both public and private healthcare sectors. She obtained her Master of Public Health from The University of Sheffield, UK and Master of Biostatistics and Epidemiology from French School of Public Health, Paris, France (École des hautes études en santé publique). 

Dr Niluka has been a human rights and gender champion from the onset of her career. She is the Gender, Equity and Human Rights (GER) focal person for her department at WHO and also an active member of the team which leads the research brief on using multidimensional poverty and vulnerability indices to inform equitable policies and interventions in preparedness for, response to and recovery from health emergencies.

Meet the Discussant: 

Juan Daniel Oviedo was appointed Chief Statistician of Colombia in August 2018. He has international professional experience in economic consulting for energy markets, and national experience in government and teaching. Previously, he was the Director of Institutional Planning and Research (2016-2018) and Director of the PhD School of Economics (2013-2016) at the Universidad del Rosario of Bogotá. In addition, he was the Founding Partner and Chief Director of LEICO Consultores (2011-2018), a leading consulting firm which performed as an expert opinion both for the private and public sector in regulated industries in Colombia and Latin America. He holds a permanent academic position at Universidad del Rosario of Bogotá (Colombia) since 2005. Juan has a PhD in economics from the University of Toulouse 1 (France) and BA in economics from the Universidad del Rosario of Bogotá (Colombia).