The evolution of news coverage about climate change as a health issue: a decadal analysis in China, India, and the USA

Climate change harms human health and wellbeing, and climate solutions often have public health benefits. Previous research has shown how news media engages and shapes public understanding of climate change, yet few studies have examined how news media reports on climate change as a public health issue. Understanding how and how much news media reports on the public health implications of climate change can shed light on public engagement in climate change, which has been deemed a public health crisis. By examining news media discourse surrounding climate change in health contexts, this study provides an assessment of how climate change is being presented as a public health issue to the global public. This study provides an assessment of how and how frequently the public health implications of climate change are being reported to the public by newspapers in the world’s three leading carbon-emitting nations. Although we found cross-national differences in the prevalence and type of reporting, the most striking finding is the relative absence of such reporting in all three countries, although it has increased in the past few years.