{"doi":"10.1111/ijd.14917","title":"Balancing public health and private wealth: lessons on climate inaction from the COVID‐19 pandemic – a report from the International Society of Dermatology Climate Change Committee","abstract":"The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a unique public health challenge without precedent in modern times. With nearly three million individuals infected worldwide,1 the disease has already overwhelmed healthcare infrastructure in several countries, disproportionately affecting already-vulnerable populations. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed humanity’s ability to quickly and collectively shift its priorities. As government mandates require communities to shelter at home and economic sectors grind to a halt, the clear message from most world leaders has been that preservation of human life and public health takes precedence over economic prosperity. Witnessing rapid enactment of measures necessary to protect human life begs the question of why we cannot take meaningful action to address another global public health crisis that is an existential threat to humanity: climate change. Climate change is an ongoing, human-propelled phenomenon driven by accelerating greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere over centuries. Although it occurs on a more protracted time scale and its effects are more gradually felt, it shares many important features with the current pandemic: Like COVID-19, climate change threatens human health globally. Climate-change-related extreme weather events impair crop production, endangering food security worldwide. Sustained warmer temperatures at higher latitudes affect the geographic ranges of infectious microorganisms and their vectors, resulting in greater numbers of people at risk for infectious diseases, including many with dermatologic manifestations.2 Mass human migration from newly inhospitable areas decreases healthcare access, lowers vaccination rates, limits access to clean water, impairs hygiene, and leads to overcrowding and disease transmission.2 By 2100, if emission trends continue, climate change is expected to cause an additional 1.5 million deaths annually, worldwide.3 As of late April 2020, approximately 200,000 people have died from COVID-19.1 Additionally, neither climate change nor COVID-19 respect geographic boundaries or political ideology. Effective, durable responses to these crises must, therefore, account for all members of society, and governments that fail to do so risk exacerbating existing healthcare disparities and perpetuating socioeconomic injustice. For example, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, some wealthier persons received prompt diagnostic testing and care, while others experiencing symptoms struggled to gain timely access to testing. Similarly, our climate crisis disproportionately affects low-income countries, though they contribute less to global greenhouse gas emissions. Worldwide, already-vulnerable groups (women, children, indigenous people, outdoor laborers) are also more adversely affected. Moreover many low-income jobs cannot be performed remotely or in climate-controlled conditions and do not offer paid sick leave, leading to financial insecurity and joblessness that re-enforce cycles of poverty and homelessness. Low-income persons are also more likely to be uninsured or underinsured, making them less able to access healthcare, despite the health risks of both pandemics and climate change. Over time, failure to meet the needs of these populations creates downstream stresses on healthcare systems that impact everyone. Finally, addressing the challenges of both pandemics and climate change requires massive, coordinated responses and trustworthy leadership rooted in science. Importantly, while many of the necessary solutions to these crises threaten short- and long-term economic prosperity, inaction also has high societal costs. Although the total economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic remain unclear, the United Nations estimated 1 trillion dollars of income loss globally in 2020.4 Worldwide, the total economic cost of unmitigated climate change is expected to reach United States (US) $4 trillion annually by 2100.2 Behavioral sci","journal":"International Journal of Dermatology","year":2020,"id":109714,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9517,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":523551,"name":"Louise K. Andersen","orcid":"0000-0001-9744-3876","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":475741,"name":"Markus D. Boos","orcid":"0000-0002-7179-5168","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":327085,"name":"Sarah J. Coates","orcid":"0000-0002-9872-5602","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":2,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:12:54.309019Z","pmid":"32385855","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}