The association between drought and outpatient visits for respiratory diseases in four northwest cities of China

Bo Wang, Shunxia Wang, Lanyu Li, Shenggang Xu, Chengyun Li, Sheng Li, Jinyu Wang, Hupeng He, Jingping Niu, Kai Zhang and Bin Luo ()
Additional contact information
Bo Wang: Lanzhou University
Shunxia Wang: The First Hospital of Tianshui
Lanyu Li: Lanzhou University
Shenggang Xu: Medical College of Hexi University
Chengyun Li: Lanzhou University
Sheng Li: The First People’s Hospital of Lanzhou
Jinyu Wang: Lanzhou University
Hupeng He: Gansu Provincial Centre for Diseases Prevention and Control
Jingping Niu: Lanzhou University
Kai Zhang: University at Albany, State University of New York
Bin Luo: Lanzhou University

Climatic Change, 2021, vol. 167, issue 1, No 2, 15 pages

Abstract: Abstract Drought is a devastating natural hazard that significantly affects human health and social and economic activities. This study aims to explore the short-term association between drought and outpatient visits for respiratory diseases (RDs) in four northwest cities, China. In this study, we obtained daily outpatient visits for RDs, meteorological factors, and air pollutant data in four cities (Lanzhou from 2014 to 2016, Wuwei from 2016 to 2018, Tianshui and Zhangye from 2015 to 2018) of northwest China. We used the daily Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) as an indicator of drought and estimated the effects of drought on outpatient visits with RDs by using a generalized additive model (GAM) in each city, controlling for daily temperature, time trends, and other confounding factors. The city-specific estimates were pooled by random-effects meta-analysis. There were 1,134,577 RDs cases in the hospitals across the four cities. We found that a 1-unit decrease in daily exposure to SPI-1 was positively associated with daily outpatient visits for RDs, with estimated RR of 1.0230 (95% CIs: 1.0096, 1.0366). Compared to non-drought periods, the RR of daily outpatient visits for RDs for exposure to all drought conditions was 1.0431 (95% CIs: 1.0309, 1.0555). In subgroup analysis, the estimated effects of drought on outpatient visits for RDs appeared larger for males than females though not statistically different, and the estimated effects in children and adolescents were the greatest among different age groups. Drought likely increases the risk of respiratory diseases, particularly among children and adolescents. We highlight that public health adaptations to drought such as drought monitoring, mitigation measures, and adaptation strategies are necessary.

Keywords: Drought; Respiratory diseases; Standardized Precipitation Index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-021-03152-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:167:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-021-03152-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03152-7

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().