The latest Lancet Countdown in Europe report by Hedi Katre Kriit, Jose Chen-Xu, Slava Jankin, and colleagues highlights the growing health impacts of climate change, with heat-related deaths rising sharply across the continent. As Europe endures a historic heatwave, the report underscores the urgency of sustained climate and health action. While investment in renewable energy and national adaptation plans is increasing, engagement with climate and health is declining. As risks intensify, maintaining momentum will be critical to protecting public health.
Each year, the Lancet Countdown in Europe takes stock of the growing toll of climate change on health across the continent. Drawing on the work of an interdisciplinary network of researchers, the initiative tracks climate-related health risks, adaptation and mitigation efforts, financing, and public engagement to assess whether Europe is keeping pace with an escalating crisis.
Established in 2021, the European Centre published the third edition of its report on Earth Day, 22 April.
According to the last report, climate change is already costing lives in Europe, and almost all of the regions have experienced a sharp increase of heat-related deaths in the last decade compared to the historical baseline.
In the report, we also see positive trends, for example more countries than ever have conducted a national health adaptation plan to minimise the risks and vulnerability of climate change. Additionally, the investment in green energy has reached record high and more than a quarter of Europe’s electricity now comes from renewable energy sources.
Despite this, a concerning decline of engagement with climate change and health is observed across societal sectors.
The challenge is turning concern into action
“To address the climate related health risks and take meaningful action, strong public support and political action is needed” says Prof. Slava Jankin from the University of Birmingham, who is leading the working group monitoring societal engagement in the report.
According to the social science theory shared beliefs, persuasive communication and trust are important ingredients to mobilise engagement, especially for a topic that is somewhat controversial like climate change.
Science is advancing faster than public and political debate
In the report, scientific engagement with the topic of climate change and health is measured by counting the number of studies published on the nexus every year.
We observe an increasing number of studies published from 1990 and onwards (Figure 1), out of which most focus on the impacts, however studies on mitigation and adaptation are disproportionately lower. Nearly all of this research is concentrated in regions where observed climate trends can be attributed to human activity.
The majority of scientific studies come from the UK, Italy and Spain. There is a clear scientific link between climate change and increasing health impacts and the World Health Organization recognised climate change as the biggest threat to human health in 2021.
However, besides the scientific community other societal sectors, such as politicians and media showcase a very low engagement with the nexus. This makes it difficult to drive ambitious climate and health policies, as the knowledge of the interlinkage between those two has not reached the relevant actors.
AI is revealing where the climate-health conversation is falling short
How do scientists track scientific, political and media engagement with climate change and health in the report?
Researchers are using large language models that can go through thousands of texts starting with scientific articles, European Parliament transcribed debates and media articles originating from different countries and languages.
Large language models go beyond simple keyword matching: they classify texts by substantive focus, reading in context and across multiple languages, with outputs validated against human-coded samples.
“Tracking annual engagement on this scale, across multiple languages and societal sectors, would not have been feasible even a few years ago” says Prof. Jankin.
Europe’s politicians are still treating climate and health as seperate issues
To illustrate the magnitude of text that must be analysed for the engagement indicators, we can look closer at the European Parliament (EP) engagement indicator, which aims to identify the number of speeches addressing climate change and health in every speech from all the EP debates.
In 2024, there were 4477 EP speeches (of which 204 mentioned climate change and 341 mentioned health), out of which only 21 mentioned both climate change and health in the same speech.
“Manual coding at this volume would take researchers months per year, and credible results require at least two independent coders reaching high agreement. Language models let us run that process at scale and repeat it annually” says Prof. Jankin.
Now the large language models can identify these key terms in texts fast and trustworthily, enabling us to track the engagement annually across societal sectors in the report.
In Figure 2 there is a country breakdown of European Parliament debates in 2024, where we can see that health and climate change are frequently discussed as stand-alone topics, however, the use of both terms (in red) in one speech is exceptionally low.
This highlights that there is a big knowledge gap among our political leaders and that topics like health and climate change are seen as separate and not connected with one another.
The media has the power to close, or widen, the gap
Media plays a big role shaping the public perception, facilitating communication between societal actors. The media can exercise a great power by highlighting or downplaying certain arguments in public debates.
We see that in the media indicator, about 13.5% of the social media posts in TikTok link together climate change and health impacts. In Figure 3, we see country specific media engagement presented, where very low engagement is seen in the Baltic countries, France and Portugal compared to other countries such as Germany, Czech Republic and Turkey.
“Previously, we used X to track media engagement, however in contrast to previous years, X stopped sharing their data openly with the public in 2023”.
With the transfer of ownership of TikTok, it might follow the footsteps of X, raising concerns about the central role of accessibility to data sources for research and knowledge translation.
Bridging the gap between evidence and action
The picture our indicators paint is of an engagement gap. The scientific evidence is strong and growing; public concern about health is consistently high.
Yet politicians, media and other societal actors rarely connect the two, leaving a powerful frame underused at the moment it is most needed.
Public health institutions are well-placed to change this: by centring health in how climate risks are communicated, by pushing for policy agendas that integrate rather than separate these issues, and by holding political actors accountable to both.
In focus
- Frame climate change as a public health issue. Linking climate impacts directly to health makes the issue more relevant and can strengthen public and political support for climate action.
- Communicate across sectors. Scientists, policymakers, media, and public health institutions should consistently connect climate change and health to close the current engagement gap.
- Use AI to monitor societal engagement. Large language models enable reliable, multilingual analysis of scientific literature, political debates, and media coverage at a scale that would be impractical through manual coding.
- Pair evidence with action. Strong scientific evidence alone is insufficient—effective communication and sustained political engagement are essential to translate knowledge into adaptation and mitigation policies.
- Track progress beyond emissions. Monitoring health impacts, adaptation efforts, public engagement, and policy alongside climate indicators provides a more complete picture of whether Europe is responding effectively to climate change.
The 2026 Europe Report of the Lancet Countdown
Read the latest report from the Lancet Countdown Europe tracks progress on health and climate change in the region.
