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Urban greening is a major goal in policies for sustainable cities, and spatial planners are nowadays strongly interested in the benefits of greenspace for the well-being of urban residents. We present a novel, model-based approach to support the development of effective greening strategies. The approach is quantitative and spatially explicit and accounts for multiple health benefits as well as burdens. In our study, we applied this generic approach to the city of Maastricht (The Netherlands) and conducted an integrated, city-scale assessment of the health benefits and burdens of four urban greenspace designs. These included: 'No greenspace', 'Current greenspace', 'Green parking lots and squares', and 'Optimized greenspace locations'. For each greenspace design, indicator values were calculated for five determinants of health and well-being: heat stress, air pollution, perceived unsafety, unattractive views, and tick-bite risk. To assess the health contribution of urban greenspace in a given design, these indicator values were compared with the values in the 'No greenspace' design. The study produced clear, quantitative conclusions about the health benefits and burdens of the urban greenspace designs for the case of Maastricht but also generated novel, more general insights relevant to the planning of urban greenspace for health and well-being. These insights concern the importance of translating health policy objectives into specific target values or thresholds and the importance of 'smart' choices in greenspace type and location that can effectively reduce trade-offs between health benefits and burdens, as well as the insights that adding more greenery not always improves urban health and that urban greenspace alone cannot solve major air pollution problems. The priorities for future research, which will address the limitations of the presented approach, concern a further expansion of the range of health benefits and burdens covered by the model and the development of a common metric for the entire range of health benefits and burdens to optimize greenspace design and maximize its overall net health benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a conceptual framework for the health implications of globalisation. The framework is developed by first identifying the main determinants of population health and the main features of the globalisation process. The resulting conceptual model explicitly visualises that globalisation affects the institutional, economic, social-cultural and ecological determinants of population health, and that the globalisation process mainly operates at the contextual level, while influencing health through its more distal and proximal determinants. The developed framework provides valuable insights in how to organise the complexity involved in studying the health effects resulting from globalisation. It could, therefore, give a meaningful contribution to further empirical research by serving as a 'think-model' and provides a basis for the development of future scenarios on health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing evidence of climate change affecting infectious disease risk in Western Europe. The call for effective adaptation to this challenge becomes increasingly stronger. This paper presents the results of a survey exploring Dutch expert perspectives on adaptation responses to climate change impacts on infectious disease risk in Western Europe. Additionally, the survey explores the expert sample's prioritization of mitigation and adaptation, and expert views on the willingness and capacity of relevant actors to respond to climate change. An integrated view on the causation of infectious disease risk is employed, including multiple (climatic and non-climatic) factors. The results show that the experts consider some adaptation responses as relatively more cost-effective, like fostering interagency and community partnerships, or beneficial to health, such as outbreak investigation and response. Expert opinions converge and diverge for different adaptation responses. Regarding the prioritization of mitigation and adaptation responses expert perspectives converge towards a 50/50 budgetary allocation. The experts consider the national government/health authority as the most capable actor to respond to climate change-induced infectious disease risk. Divergence and consensus among expert opinions can influence adaptation policy processes. Further research is necessary to uncover prevailing expert perspectives and their roots, and compare these.

Climate change possibly affects public health in the Netherlands, including changes in (a) temperature-related effects, heat stress and air pollution, (b) allergies, (c) vector borne infectious disease, and (d) food- and waterborne infectious disease. Due to many prevailing uncertainties, opinions differ regarding the exact size of the expected health risks and the speed at which these might occur, as well as regarding to what degree society would need to or could adapt to these potential health effects. Thus, the gaps in our knowledge are substantial. Scientists and experts are clearly concerned about the limited amount of attention being paid to health effects of climate change in the Netherlands. In response, a proposal for a research programme 'Klimaatverandering en Gezondheid' ('Climate change and health') has been developed over the past year.