Human health is increasingly affected by our environment, in particular by weather and climate.  This is happening directly due to extreme heat and cold and indirectly through the increased emergence and transmission of infectious diseases. Research into the links between human health and the environment is  becoming ever more essential to develop interventions and policies that will protect lives and the wellbeing of populations now and in the future.

Public health researchers face an ongoing challenge of accessing and linking human health and weather and climate data. Data linkage is the practice of taking environmental observations at sites and times and matching this with medical and health data. However these data sets  do not necessarily match neither spatially nor temporally with one another due to the range of data being studied and the  variety of statistical tools.

The following video presents why data linkage is important and how it works, through the interviews with researchers and national leaders in the fields of weather, climate and public health and includes:

• Examples of data linkage in practice using the university’s MEDMI Platform from a selection of research projects;
• Why data linkage is key for research and the development of policy;
• The new national capability in the EPHSS (Environmental Public Health Surveillance System) provided by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA*) (formerly Public Health England [PHE], an original partner of the NERC MRC funded MEDMI Project).

On 1st July 2023, the MEDMI web site & server were decommissioned.

Data for public health analyses will be accessible via a facility operated by the UK Health Security Agency: the Environmental Public Health Surveillance System (EPHSS).

For access to such data, please email [email protected]

* PHE transitioned to UKHSA on 1st October, 2021.