The CHANGE (Climate Health ANalysis Grading Evaluation) tool for weight of evidence reviews on climate change and health research

Abstract

Background: Climate change has been identified as one of the biggest threats to human health. Despite this claim, there are no standardized tools that assess the rigor of published literature for use in weight of evidence (WOE) reviews. Standardized assessment tools are essential for creating clear and comparable WOE reviews. As such, we developed a standardized tool for evaluating the quality of climate change and health studies focused on evaluating studies that quantify exposure-response relationships and studies that implement and/or evaluate adaptation interventions.

Methods: The authors explored systematic-review methodology to enhance transparency and increase efficiency in summarizing and synthesizing findings from studies on climate change and health research. The authors adapted and extended existing WOE methods to develop the CHANGE (Climate Health ANalysis Grading Evaluation) tool. The resulting assessment tool has been refined through application and subsequent team input.

Results: The CHANGE tool is a two-step standardized tool for systematic review of climate change and health studies of exposure-response relationships and adaptation intervention studies. Step one of the CHANGE tool aims to classify studies included in weight-of-evidence reviews and step two assesses the quality and presence of bias in the climate change and health studies.

Conclusion: The application of the CHANGE tool in WOE reviews of climate change and health will lead to increased comparability, objectivity, and transparency within this research area.

Keywords: Biomedical; Climate change and health; Environmental exposures; Environmental health; Global warming; Human health; Quality and bias assessment; Scoping review; Systematic review; meta-analysis.