Data Resource Profile: Climate and Enteric Diseases Research Project (ClimED)

Enteric diseases, also known as diarrhoeal or intestinal infectious diseases in humans, are a significant public health problem worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries, in which the majority of the burden still exists [1]. Climate change can impact the global burden of enteric diseases because changes in weather and other major climate-related events can alter the transmission of enteropathogens, which in turn can indirectly increase morbidity and mortality. Existing literature suggests that warmer temperatures, heavy rainfall, and flooding may increase the risk of enteric-disease morbidity [2–4]. Given the projected rise in temperatures, variability in rainfall (e.g. more days with extreme rainfall or very little rainfall), increased flooding occurrences, and intensification of tropical cyclones, severe enteric-disease morbidity and mortality related to climate change are likely to occur in the future [5]. Although numerous studies have analysed the impacts of climate and climate-related events on enteric diseases, a significant limitation is deriving global- or regional-level estimates for enteric risk due to climate exposures, mainly due to the substantial heterogeneity when pooling risk curves across studies in the literature [2, 3]. This is because each study has varying definitions of exposure and outcome, modelling approaches, and spatiotemporal resolutions. To overcome this limitation, the Climate Change and Enteric Diseases Research (ClimED) was established to consolidate multi-country human diarrheal disease datasets of varying types (e.g. mortality and morbidity) together with processed climate-related variables from open data sources. The consolidated dataset incorporates standardized definitions of exposure and outcome, enabling the application of a uniform modelling approach to generate consistent risk curves across different regions, as well as pooled risk estimates. These pooled risk curves can then be used to estimate both historical and projected impacts of climate change on diarrheal diseases, while accounting for adaptation and mitigation measures. ClimED was initiated by the Department of Global Health Policy at the University of Tokyo in May 2023 and they coordinated with various international collaborators who have access to datasets on enteric diseases from governmental health records, surveillance systems, and national health-insurance databases.