Health Equity in Climate Change Policies and Public Health Policies Related to Climate Change: Protocol for a Systematic Review

Abstract

The relationship between risks to health equity and climate change is well established, and various international organizations and literature has called for intersectoral action for tackling these issues. While there is a growing recognition of the importance of equity-focused responses to climate change, if and how health equity measures are incorporated into climate-change-related policy decisions has not yet been adequately explored. There are numerous approaches and frameworks for conducting policy analysis, and for understanding equity in the context of climate change and public health separately; however, a comprehensive framework for exploring the complexity of these interacting factors is hard to find. This review aims to systematically identify policy analysis frameworks and studies focusing on health equity in climate change related policies. Five electronic databases will be searched for peer-reviewed articles in English and from 2000. Articles will be subjected to systematic retrieval and quality assessment, and thematic analysis will be used for data analysis. The study findings will provide insight into different existing policy-analysis frameworks and policy-analysis approaches to understand health equity considerations in climate change policies and in health policies related to climate change.