Why does climate change affect people with limb loss even more than others?

Climate change is hard on everyone’s health, but people who have lost limbs face some very specific risks that often get overlooked. Professor David Morgenroth, MD, and Assistant Professor Elizabeth Halsne, PhD, MSE, L/CPO, were co-authors on a review paper that explores how extreme heat, freezing cold, major storms, and power outages pose unique challenges for this community.

Researchers found that climate change affects people with limb loss in unique ways and underscore the need for rehabilitation care providers and researchers to focus on this issue. The study looked at how people with limb loss could be educated on the climate crisis and climate preparedness and made recommendations to co-develop resiliency strategies with patients, governments, and community organizations to improve adaptive capacity and advocate for policy changes that will enact protections for the at-risk patients. 

This study is online now in the National Library of Medicine.