This survey was conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication using Knowledge Networks’ nationally representative online panel of adults in the United States. Panel members are initially recruited using random digit dialing from a sampling frame of all U.S. phone numbers. Participants are provided hardware and Internet access to enable them to access Web-based questionnaires. The recruitment success rate is approximately 56%. A random sample of these panel members was drawn for the U.S. survey.

To accommodate a large number of survey measures, the U.S. instrument was divided into two questionnaires that were administered between October 7 and November 12, 2008. Of the original 3,997 invited respondents, 2,164 completed both questionnaires, a 54% response rate. The online panel tracks the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) on demographic variables such as age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, geographic region and employment. In order to adjust for non-coverage or non-response biases, the data was weighted to reflect CPS distributions of age, race, gender and education. The margin for error for the weighted data is ±2% within a 95% probability. Yale and George Mason University’s Human Subjects Review Boards approved the study protocol.

This survey was conducted by Environics Research Group between February 12 and March 3, 2008, using telephone interviews of 1,600 respondents. The sample of households was chosen using random-digit dialing. Household members 18 years of age or older with the most recent birthday were interviewed, either in English or French. The response rate was 10%. The data was weighted based on the Canadian 2006 Census to reflect regional population demographic characteristics for the country’s 10 provinces and three territories, and by age and gender in line with national population percentages. The final weighted sample under-represented those with lower education levels (25% high school education or less compared to 45% in the 2006 Census). The margin of error for the entire sample is ±2.4% with a 95% probability. Health Canada, which commissioned the research, does not require human subjects approval for public opinion research.

Using a list-based telephone survey method, this survey was conducted by one of the authors (RD) between January 12 and February 28, 2009. The March 2008 Electoral Register provided the sample frame for the study; phone numbers were identified through the online directories of the two main telephone providers. Interviews were conducted primarily in Maltese (97.4%), with the remaining in English. The sample—stratified by gender, age group, and regional district representative of distributions found within the Maltese adult population—yielded 543 completed questionnaires, a 92.7% completion rate. The final respondent sample was compared to the characteristics of the initial sample of 800 and found to be statistically indistinguishable by age, gender and region. In comparing the sample to the 2005 Census across the categories of labor status, occupation and education, the respondents were slightly more likely to be employed, professionals, and more highly educated. The margin of error is ±5% with a 95% probability. The University Research Ethics Committee provided prior approval of the study protocol.

Fifty percent or more of Canadians and Maltese said that climate change is already harming people’s health, while only slightly more than a third of Americans said the same. A majority in all three countries said that in the future climate change will likely cause poverty/reduced standards of living, water shortages, and disease (United States and Malta), and more severe/frequent hurricanes and heat waves (United States and Canada), all of which either directly or indirectly undermine public health.

Less than half of Americans said that they believe they themselves, or those people close to them, will be harmed by global warming; they were more likely to cite people in developing countries and future generations as those who are most at risk. Conversely, between about one-half to three-quarters of Canadians said that they themselves, their community, and their family are vulnerable to the human health impacts of climate change, and about equal numbers of Maltese were concerned about climate change’s impacts on people all over the world, and on themselves and their families.

When presented with a list of potential health risks from climate change, the majority of people in both Canada and Malta said the changing climate will cause increased respiratory and breathing difficulties, cancer and heat-related health problems. No questions addressed this topic in the United States survey.

Substantial numbers of the American, Canadian and Maltese people appear to believe that climate change poses important risks to human health and well-being now or in decades to come. With regard to timing, about one third of Americans believe that health impacts are already occurring, while about half of Canadians and two thirds of Maltese believe that people are being harmed now.

The most commonly perceived threats to health and well-being, however, differed between countries. For example, Americans saw droughts and water shortages as one of the most “likely” global warming impacts (65%), the Maltese saw it as the least likely (where water shortages in Malta and worldwide were seen as “likely” by 47% and 57%, respectively), and Canadians placed it in the middle of the range of likely impacts, although they were more apt to see it as a likely risk than Americans (drought conditions, 78%). These differences are probably due in part to the array of response options provided in each of the surveys. Cultural differences, local and regional climate conditions, and personal experiences may also have played a role in these differences. Many regions of the United States and Canada have experienced drought conditions over the past decade [23], which may influence perceptions. Malta is unique in this respect as it has the capacity to supply demand for potable water by desalinating sea water.

Even by the early 1990s, concern over climate change was highest internationally in Canada, Europe and South America, and lower in the United States [15]. American concern over global warming has continued to rank lower compared to other nations, in part due to the larger representation of climate change deniers [24]. Standardized questions about health impact should be developed so that future surveys can more meaningfully explore these perceptions within and between regions and nations, and particularly address potential differences between developed and developing countries.

It is important to note, however, that climate change may lack salience as a health issue in the three countries studied. When asked closed-ended questions, many respondents gave answers consistent with beliefs in climate change as a threat to human health. Conversely, when asked open-ended questions, and closed-ended questions of a more specific nature, relatively few respondents gave answers consistent with perceptions of climate change as a serious risk to human health. For example, few Canadians, unprompted, identified climate change as the environmental problem or hazard that poses the greatest health risk to their nation. About half of the American survey respondents were unwilling to venture even a general guess (e.g., hundreds, thousands, millions) as to how many people are being—or will in the future be—harmed worldwide by global warming. A World Health Organization study estimated that by the year 2000 climate change was causing 150,000 deaths across the globe annually, with another 5 million ‘disability-adjusted life years’ per year due to increased illness and malnutrition [25]. Of those in the United States who did guess how many deaths currently are caused by global warming, the majority underestimated by at least a factor of 10, choosing “hundreds” or “none” instead of thousands. Only 5% of Americans said correctly that estimates of current global warming injuries and illnesses are in the millions. These numbers have been publicized by the World Health Organization and in some media reports [26,27]. Yet even in Malta, when asked “What comes to your mind when you hear the terms ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’?”, only 9.5% of respondents unprompted associated climate change with human health, and even so may be the result of confusion between greenhouse gas impacts and other types of air pollution [20].

The low salience of the human health implications of climate change should not come as a surprise. Climate change receives relatively little news coverage [28], and when it does, the human health consequences are rarely mentioned [29]. Rather, news representations and entertainment programming representations of climate change impacts tend to focus on attributes of the environment such as polar ice and glaciers, and non-human species such as polar bears and pine trees [30]. Moreover, until relatively recently, public health officials have been largely silent about climate change as a health risk [31,32]. Much of the recent public health communication activity about climate change appears to be targeted internally—from leaders in the public health community to members of the public health community at large—rather than aimed at the public. Health Canada recently conducted a study of provincial and local health authority websites and found that while 69% provide information related to health conditions that may be exacerbated by climate change, only 10% mention climate change specifically [18]. The same appears to be true of American and Maltese public health websites, although formal assessments have not been conducted.

There were substantial differences among the three surveys with regard to questions used to assess perceptions of who is most susceptible to harm. The U.S. and Maltese questionnaires asked about harm to people both at home and abroad, while the Canadian questionnaire focused exclusively on Canadian communities and people. Furthermore, the U.S. questionnaire asked about harm to “future generations of people,” which proved to be the category of people that Americans were most likely to see as being harmed by global warming. Similarly, the Maltese questionnaire asked respondents to indicate whether they thought climate change impacts are occurring or will happen in the future.

Although the range of responses across the surveys was sizable, about a third or more of people in the United States and Canada saw themselves (United States, 32%; Canada, 67%), their family (United States, 35%; Canada, 46%), and people in their community (United States, 39%; Canada, 76%) as being vulnerable to at least moderate harm from with climate change. About one third of Maltese (31%) said they were most concerned about the risk to themselves and their families. Americans were the least likely to see themselves, their family and their community as being at risk, and viewed distant people elsewhere (in the United States, in other countries, and in future generations) as more likely to be harmed. Canadians, when asked this in an open-ended question, were most likely to see the elderly and children as most susceptible to harm; relatively few respondents pointed to other at-risk groups such as people with low incomes or who live in the Arctic or coastal regions that will be more heavily affected by climate change.

A large literature in the field of health and risk communication points to an individual’s personal sense of risk as the most powerful motivator of behavioral change [33,34]. This theory suggests that the closer to home a threat is, the more likely individuals will be to recognize and act on it. This may be particularly relevant in encouraging public adoption of adaptation measures to avoid increased climate health risks. A competing literature in political science—of perhaps more relevance to campaigns that seek to use public health as a frame for motivating reductions in national greenhouse gas emissions—finds that perceptions of national threat are sufficient drivers of policy support [35], and that the importance of self-interest in motivating behavior is over-estimated [36]. Thus, the importance of perceived personal as opposed to national health consequences of climate change is an important research question remaining to be answered.

The fact that substantial numbers of people in all countries did not view themselves as vulnerable or did not identify at-risk groups identified by scientists to be vulnerable should also not come as a surprise. Public health authorities have only just begun over the last decade to formulate approaches to identify and assess vulnerabilities in specific communities and regions [37,38] with assessments being conducted by many countries as a function of their commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including Canada [39] and Malta. Because these assessments are only relatively recent, there has been little communication of this information to the public.

Canadian’s responses to an open-ended question about the ways in which climate change can harm the health of Canadians further reinforce our previously stated conclusion that the human health implications of climate change may lack salience. While 60% of Canadian respondents were able, unprompted, to name at least one specific health threat, a wide range of threats were mentioned but even the most commonly mentioned—respiratory diseases—was named by only 22% of respondents.

When specifically prompted, however, Canadians and Maltese in large numbers expressed their belief that climate change can cause respiratory/breathing problems (78–91%), heat-related problems (75–84%), cancer (61–90%), and infectious diseases (49–62%). Large numbers of Canadians also indicated sunburn (79%) and injuries from extreme weather events (73%), and large numbers of Maltese indicated allergies (84%). Some of these beliefs are misperceptions—both sunburn and (skin) cancer are likely tied to the common misperception that climate change is caused by the hole in the earth’s ozone layer [40]—but these findings indicate that the Canadian and Maltese public accept the claim that climate change can harm human health in specific ways, even if they are not based upon an accurate scientific understanding. Future educational efforts may need to focus on increasing knowledge of these specific risks and ensuring that the public is aware of their hazards, symptoms and of preventative measures.

Across all three countries, large numbers of people are already willing to accept that climate change has implications for human health. It is widely recognized by public health officials [8] and research scientists from other disciplines [1,2] that people in all nations need to take actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the risks posed by climate change. The willingness of Americans, Canadians and the Maltese to accept climate change as a health issue may indicate an opportunity for public health officials to educate the public not just about climate change’s health risks, but about actions needed to limit climate change and to adapt successfully to its risks.

Krosnick and colleagues [41] demonstrated that Americans who view climate change as being harmful to people are significantly more likely to support climate policy responses. More recently, research has shown that segments of the American public who understand that climate change is harming people here (rather than only in nations far away) and now (rather than at some time in the future, if at all), are more engaged in personal actions and more supportive of climate change policies [42,43]. Other studies that have assessed population behavior changes for climate change and air quality, however, have found that regional and perceptual barriers may exist as well [44,45].

Framing is an important process by which communicators can enhance their impact by linking messages and recommendations to their audience members’ deeply held values and beliefs. By defining or “framing” the relevance of climate change in ways that connect to the core values of specific audience segments—and repeatedly reinforcing that information through a variety of trusted sources and networks of recruitment—purposive communication can foster enhanced public engagement with the issue.

The public health frame—i.e., that climate change is a major threat to people’s health and well-being—has considerable potential to motivate individuals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take adaptive actions to reduce their health risks from expected impacts. The health frame connects a complex and poorly understood topic (such as climate change) to risks the public already understand and accept as important (e.g., asthma, respiratory problems, vulnerability to extreme heat, food-borne illness and infectious disease) [30,46,47]. Several of the authors have argued that a public health frame could shift the climate debate in the United States from one based on environmental values to public health values, which are more widely held, cutting across ideology and partisanship [30,31,48]. It would also enable a new and highly respected group of voices—such as doctors, nurses and public health officials—to engage the public in the issue. And finally, it moves the location of impacts closer to home, replacing polar bears with vulnerable people, such as children, the elderly and the poor. These three surveys indicate that people in the United States, Canada and Malta are receptive to the idea that climate change will have human health impacts—and thus this may be an indication that this type of message framing is likely to be effective. People who perceive climate change as a human health threat may be more willing to adopt lifestyles that are lower in greenhouse gas emissions and support mitigation and adaptation policies. At the same time, the surveys revealed that climate change health risks are not necessarily well-known or understood, suggesting that campaigns that impart this knowledge will be viewed as imparting novel and potentially useful information.

Recent research in the United States has found that when global warming is introduced as a health problem and information is provided about how specific mitigation-related policy actions will lead to health benefits such as cleaner air to breath, healthier food to eat, and more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly communities, a broad cross-section of Americans responded positively to this re-framing of the issue [48].

Many of the policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions provide direct societal benefits from improved public health, thereby offsetting some of the often more apparent costs of carbon tax, cap or regulatory mechanisms [46]. Public health officials can assist policymakers responsible for actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by heightening their awareness of the health co-benefits of climate policies and their monetary value. Recently, a series of papers in the Lancet quantified health outcomes from increased household energy efficiency, walking and cycling, less consumption of animal products, and cleaner fuels and technologies in order to better integrate health gains, and cost savings, into climate policy decisions [47,49–53]. A public health approach to climate change may also have more relevance at local governmental levels. More walkable communities, public transit systems and urban reforestation serve to protect global climate [46], but of perhaps more relevance to local officials, they also directly reduce air pollution levels in their municipalities, and may aid them in achieving other environmental objectives, such as reduced ground level ozone.

In Canada, health promotion programs already exist that attempt to motivate individuals to reduce their personal risks from climate-related hazards such as West Nile virus, smog, extreme heat and food safety [18]; similar programs exist in the United States and Malta. The 2009 Health Canada report found that virtually all materials produced by these programs on climate-related risks do not refer to climate change, and moreover, even with dissemination of the materials, many Canadians still are not adopting health-protective behaviors. There is little evidence on whether the use of a climate change public health frame in engaging the public on adaptation to these risks would be more effective, however. This raises an important issue that should be addressed in additional research.

Little social science research exists to date on the ways in which people—in any country—are thinking about the health risks from climate change. As posited above, introducing a new frame for people to use in understanding the complex issue of climate change may serve to bring a new dimension to help efforts of public health officials increase public knowledge of climate change health risks and motivate individuals to take adaptive and greenhouse gas reduction actions. Several of the authors on this paper are currently conducting research on the effectiveness of a public health message frame compared to traditional environmental and national security frames, and are analyzing the differences in message appeal across audience segments that have previously been defined by their attitudes, beliefs, actions and policy preferences on global warming [42,43]. We expect that the manner in which various audiences process public health information is likely to be influenced by their deeply held values, attitudes and beliefs, and is also a function of variables that differ across individuals, such as political ideology [54] or socioeconomics, as well as those that vary at broader scales, such as national cultural traits [24]. The development of uniform measures of climate health beliefs, risk perceptions and adaptation actions will provide a yardstick by which comparisons can be more easily made at all levels and by teams of researchers working independently, with the end goal of the development of more effective public health outreach campaigns on climate change at all levels—local, regional, national and international.

However useful surveys may be in broadly understanding the public’s perceptions, more fine-grained information about the mental models they use in processing this information will also need to be obtained using techniques such as those established by Baruch Fischhoff at Carnegie Mellon [55]. In-depth interviews with both members of the scientific community and the public on climate change health risks and adaptation responses will be needed in order to learn what types of information will be most valuable to audiences in affecting behavioral changes to reduce their risks from climate change as individuals and communities. Surveys, such as conducted in Malta, that obtain richer narrative data may also provide a window to greater understanding of the ways that the public intersects with this issue.