What is the impact of climate change and associated weather extremes for primary care in England: A qualitative study amongst people with multimorbidity

PI Title: Dr Glenn Simpson

Lead member: Southampton

Aim
To understand the implications of climate change and associated weather extremes for primary care services in England, amongst people with multimorbidity.

Why is this important?
Multimorbidity refers to people living with two or more long-term health conditions. This impacts 15 million people in England, contributing to substantial health and financial costs. As people are living longer, there are likely to be higher rates of multimorbidity over the next decade. Alongside this growth in multimorbidity, it is predicted there will be increasing extremes of weather impacting our climate. Forecasts suggest that England will have more heatwaves, droughts, increased risk of flooding and severe storms. People with multimorbidity are at risk from these extremes of weather and currently seek most of their care within primary care services. As the number of people with multimorbidity increases, alongside climate changes, we are uncertain about the impact this will have on primary care services. This knowledge could help us to prepare and plan care for the future.

What will we do?
1. Search and collate published and unpublished UK and international evidence to understand what previous research has been done on the impact of climate change on primary care services amongst people with multimorbidity.
2. Carry out four focus groups, composed of: i) people living with multimorbidity; ii) informal carers providing care to those with multimorbidity; iii) primary care, and other healthcare and social care professionals; iv) experts in health and climate change science. We will seek views and lived experiences on the impact of extremes of weather on services and possible measures to reduce impacts on health.
3. We will use the findings of the above two studies to highlight opportunities for intervening and planning of primary care services, and we will take this forward in a future research grant to develop these ideas further.

Patient and public involvement
The project was developed and shaped by our patient and public contributors. We have acted on feedback and will continue to seek input on all aspects of project design, data collection, analysis and results sharing.

Findings
Findings will be available to people with multimorbidity, and those who work and make decisions in healthcare, to push forward conversations about how to respond to climate change-related health impacts and prepare primary care services. We will share results, discuss implications and publicise findings through journals, conferences and social media. We will use the findings to make a case for further funding that will allow us to develop a larger programme of research.

Amount awarded: £38,234