In our quest to be innovative in our offerings, Gastro Hep Advances (GHA) is pleased to announce the launch of another new special section, “The Impact of Climate Change on Digestive Health.”
Climate change and the allied challenges of pollution and biodiversity loss are well underway and predicted to continue. The health effects of cardiac and respiratory diseases are well known, but there are also significant and less well appreciated impacts on digestive health. A growing body of literature is documenting the links between environmental change and digestive disease.
Paradoxically, health care delivery is responsible for a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. As much as 8% of US national greenhouse gas emissions derive from the health sector. A lot of work is being done on how these emissions might be reduced while maintaining high quality care. Endoscopy delivery, with its high volumes, significant generation of waste, and use of disposables, is a particular focus of attention.
Researchers in these fields, which bridge clinical work and areas not traditionally part of medicine, such as life cycle analysis and engineering, may find it difficult to find a journal that is suitable for their work. We wish to change that. We want to contribute to meeting the challenge of climate change by making GHA a hub for the dissemination of work relating to the intersection of digestive health, climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. GHA is an online-only journal with a low carbon footprint, which we hope will increase its attractiveness to climate researchers. We will commission occasional reviews of selected topics and welcome submissions on these topics as they relate to digestive health and disease. We hope you find it as intriguing and energizing as our Board of Editors does. Readers who wish to learn more about this topic may find the recent overview published in GHA useful.1
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”
Native American proverb
Footnotes
Conflicts of Interest: Vinod K. Rustgi, Shanthi Srinivasan, and Desmond Leddin are members of the Board of Editors. Their paper was handled in accordance with our conflict of interest policy. See https://www.ghadvances.org/content/authorinfo#conflict_of_interest_policy for full details.
Funding: The authors report no funding.
Ethical Statement: Institutional review board approval was not required for this work.
Reporting Guidelines: Not applicable for this article type.
Reference
- 1.Leddin D. The impact of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss on digestive health and disease. Gastro Hep Adv. 2024;3(4):519–534. [Google Scholar]