Humans are starting to feel the effects of climate change in their communities – more frequent severe weather, rising sea levels and disruptive changes to natural ecosystems.
Climate change also has a major impact on health outcomes. Air pollution and extreme heat can have negative impacts on individuals’ health and lead to severe illness.
Jacqueline Laures-Gore, chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, co-authored an article in Seminars in Speech and Language that highlights how climate change and health outcomes intersect.
“Many factors related to climate change have wide-ranging effects on human well-being, such as loss of home and/or livelihood, residential instability, exposure to natural disasters and/or violence, disruption of social networks and food insecurity,” Laures-Gore and her colleagues wrote. “These are recognized risk factors for mental health impacts that have been associated with posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, suicidal ideation and aggressive behavior.”
Several factors can influence a person’s ability to adapt to climate change, including socioeconomic status, political challenges to climate science, racial inequality and physical and mental disability, among others.
According to the Global Burden of Disease Study, an international study designed to track health loss across place and time, researchers identified air pollution as one of the five main risk factors that can lead to a stroke. And climate change’s negative effects can be particularly difficult for individuals with post-stroke aphasia.
Post-stroke aphasia is a language disorder that occurs after someone has a stroke, and it can affect a person’s reading, writing, verbal expression and ability to understand others.
Those with post-stroke aphasia can face numerous challenges due to climate change, including accessing rehabilitation and medical care, receiving and understanding important communication during severe weather, having the financial resources to maintain their lifestyle, and access to power sources to keep their communication devices charged and ready to use.
Laures-Gore and her colleagues recommend educating the public about post-stroke aphasia and considering people with disabilities when preparing for climate-related incidents.
“The Aphasia Community Center in Sarasota, Fla., has created the Aphasia-Friendly Hurricane Disaster Kit, which provides aphasia-friendly infographics instructing people with aphasia what they should do for food, water, medications, etc.,” they wrote. “Similarly, aphasia awareness campaigns seeking to educate others about aphasia will help ensure that disaster shelters and emergency response personnel, as well as emergency preparedness guidelines, are communicatively accessible for those with post-stroke aphasia. Such efforts will move us closer to climate justice for them.”
About the Researcher
Jacqueline Laures-Gore
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Jacqueline Laures-Gore is a professor and chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. She directs the Aphasia and Motor Speech Disorders Laboratory at Georgia State, where current projects include understanding and addressing stress in persons with aphasia, post-stroke depression, integrative health practices and the Atlanta Motor Speech Disorders Corpus. She is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and a 2022 Honors of the Association recipient from the Georgia Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Citation
Greenwald, R., Laures-Gore, J. S., and Nogueira, L. M. “The Intersectionality of Climate Change and Post-Stroke Aphasia.” Seminars in Speech and Language, 45(1):46-55. DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1777858.