Government rollbacks of climate monitoring is a public health emergency

In an opinion piece published July 16 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate, Jeremy Jacobs of Vanderbilt University and Shazia Khan of Yale School of Medicine draw attention to the rollback of government efforts to collect data on climate change, and how the loss of this infrastructure imperils public health efforts.

Climate disasters like heatwaves, wildfires, floods and hurricanes can contribute to a range of health conditions, including heart disease, respiratory issues, disease outbreaks, mental health crises and traumatic injuries. The elimination of federal and state tools to monitor and forecast these events makes it much more difficult for public health systems to prepare appropriately and respond, with the most vulnerable populations – children, the elderly and people with chronic conditions – suffering the greatest impacts.

In their opinion piece, Jacobs and Khan point to the recent dismantling of multiple climate monitoring efforts. The Trump administration discontinued NOAA’s Billion-Dollar Disasters Database; the EPA’s air quality monitoring, heat index surveillance and collection of climate data related to disease; and NIH funding for research into heat-related deaths, wildfire smoke exposure and how climate impacts the spread of infectious diseases. They argue that this undermining of climate data will have international effects and constitutes a public health emergency.

Jacobs and Khan call on the scientific and medical communities to defend the integrity and visibility of climate data as foundational to public health. They urge scientific journal editors and funding agencies to support research related to climate and health, to emphasize transparency and not to bow to political pressure to censor correct terminology.

“To ignore climate data is to abandon public health in the face of its greatest modern challenge,” Jacobs said. “It is to walk into the next disaster with eyes wide shut.”

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Climate: https://plos.io/46euUh3

Citation: Jacobs JW, Khan SS (2025) Erasing the evidence: United States climate rollbacks and the implications for public health. PLOS Clim 4(7): e0000667. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000667

Author Countries: United States

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.