Exploring the sex and gender dimensions of climate change in East Africa

• Author / Creator

  Gong, Crystal

• The unprecedented impacts from climate change have been documented and are projected to continue to dramatically effect human health and wellbeing. East Africa is projected to experience an increase in average surface temperatures and decrease in precipitation levels, impacting ecosystems, food systems, and human systems. Vulnerable groups, including women and children, are projected to experience increased vulnerability to climate change. These climate-health impacts are not sex or gender neutral; understanding the sex and/ or gender dimensions of climate-health in East Africa will inform more equitable climate programming, planning, and policy. Therefore, the aim of this research was to examine the sex and gender dimensions of climate change as it relates to health in East Africa.
  First, a scoping methodology was utilized to systematically search three databases. Primary research articles that focused on climatic variables and human health research in East Africa, and published between 2009 to 2018 were included in the review. Relevance screening was carried out by two independent reviewers for title and abstract screening, followed by full-text review. We summarized the nature and extent to which sex and/ or gender was or was not included in the broader climate-health literature. We found that the number of articles considering sex and/ or gender was increasing over time; however, the level of high gender engagement in these articles remained low over time in East Africa. Furthermore, we found that a high proportion of quantitative studies were incorrectly using “sex” and “gender” terms, and when sex and/or gender was considered in the study, it was typically treated as a confounder and controlled for within the statistical analysis, without examining how sex and/or gender might modify or mediate the impact of climate change on health outcomes. This represented a concerning gap in the climate-health literature since climate change is expected to perpetuate existing sex and gender-based health disparities in East Africa. Therefore, Chapter 3 aimed to begin filling this research gap, and focused on exploring how sex quantitatively matters in the context of climate change and health, by examining how the effect of weather on health outcomes varies by sex in Southwestern Uganda. A retrospective analysis was conducted using de-identified health data (2011-2014) from Bwindi Community Hospital matched to meteorological data from Kanungu District. Multivariable time-series negative binomial regression models were built and fitted to the data to explore associations between weather and hospital visits for acute gastrointestinal illness, pneumonia, and cardiovascular disease outcomes, and then separate sex models were built. Three multivariable models were built for each health outcome to descriptively compare differences in associations for models that did not consider sex, models that only examined females, and models that only examined males. Overall, the significance and magnitude of associations varied between the female and male models, and models that did not consider sex. This finding suggests that the effect of meteorological parameters on the incidence of hospital visits varies by sex across health outcomes (ie. acute gastrointestinal illness, pneumonia, and cardiovascular disease). These findings underscore the importance of considering sex and/ or gender in future climate-health research. Understanding how sex and gender impact health will be critical in informing meaningful responses to climate change.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Gender
  • Sex
  • Weather
  • Health
  • East Africa
  • Vulnerability
  • Climate change
  • Equity

• Graduation date

  Fall 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-5h5m-6v75

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.