Prof. Deepti Ganapathy co-authors study on climate and health coverage published in The Lancet Planetary Health
Decade-long analysis across China, India, and the US reveals how infrequently climate change is presented as a public health issue
13 December, 2025, Bengaluru: Prof. Deepti Ganapathy, Management Communication area, has co-authored a new research article published in The Lancet Planetary Health, one of the leading journals dedicated to climate and health scholarship. The study, titled ‘The evolution of news coverage about climate change as a health issue: A decadal analysis in China, India, and the USA’, offers some of the most extensive cross-national examination to date of how major news outlets frame the health implications of climate change.
Climate change harms human health and wellbeing in many ways, while many climate solutions have profound public health benefits. The authors note that prior research has illuminated how news media engage with and shape the public's understanding of climate change. News reporting on the topic, as a result, helps shape public engagement with climate change as a health crisis. Yet, few studies have examined how news media report on climate change as a public health issue.
In this article, the authors assess both the frequency and the framing of newspaper coverage in the world’s three leading carbon-emitting countries, i.e., China, India, and the United States. Their decade-long analysis reveals how infrequently climate change is presented as a public health issue. Out of 22 million news articles examined, only a minute share connected the two, despite well-established scientific evidence linking climate change to a wide range of health outcomes. When media coverage did acknowledge these links, it tended to focus on immediate concerns such as extreme weather, heat exposure, air quality, and food insecurity, while offering far less attention to vulnerable populations, long-term solutions to the crisis, or the views of public health experts.
The study advances earlier scholarship by showing how this absence of a health frame may limit public engagement with climate change, particularly in societies where health consequences often resonate more strongly than environmental or economic arguments. It also highlights the potential for more robust, health-oriented reporting to strengthen public understanding of climate risks and to support more informed policy dialogue.
This research is the outcome of a multi-institutional collaboration among scholars from Western Carolina University; the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; the University of Minnesota; George Mason University; and the City University of Hong Kong. The co-author team includes Melinda R. Weathers, Deepti Ganapathy, Marceleen M. Mosher, Teresa Myers, Neha Gour, John Kotcher, Edward W. Maibach, Mulin Jiang, Qianying Ye, and Fei ‘Chris’ Shen.
Prof. Deepti Ganapathy co-authors study on climate and health coverage published in The Lancet Planetary Health
Decade-long analysis across China, India, and the US reveals how infrequently climate change is presented as a public health issue
13 December, 2025, Bengaluru: Prof. Deepti Ganapathy, Management Communication area, has co-authored a new research article published in The Lancet Planetary Health, one of the leading journals dedicated to climate and health scholarship. The study, titled ‘The evolution of news coverage about climate change as a health issue: A decadal analysis in China, India, and the USA’, offers some of the most extensive cross-national examination to date of how major news outlets frame the health implications of climate change.
Climate change harms human health and wellbeing in many ways, while many climate solutions have profound public health benefits. The authors note that prior research has illuminated how news media engage with and shape the public's understanding of climate change. News reporting on the topic, as a result, helps shape public engagement with climate change as a health crisis. Yet, few studies have examined how news media report on climate change as a public health issue.
In this article, the authors assess both the frequency and the framing of newspaper coverage in the world’s three leading carbon-emitting countries, i.e., China, India, and the United States. Their decade-long analysis reveals how infrequently climate change is presented as a public health issue. Out of 22 million news articles examined, only a minute share connected the two, despite well-established scientific evidence linking climate change to a wide range of health outcomes. When media coverage did acknowledge these links, it tended to focus on immediate concerns such as extreme weather, heat exposure, air quality, and food insecurity, while offering far less attention to vulnerable populations, long-term solutions to the crisis, or the views of public health experts.
The study advances earlier scholarship by showing how this absence of a health frame may limit public engagement with climate change, particularly in societies where health consequences often resonate more strongly than environmental or economic arguments. It also highlights the potential for more robust, health-oriented reporting to strengthen public understanding of climate risks and to support more informed policy dialogue.
This research is the outcome of a multi-institutional collaboration among scholars from Western Carolina University; the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; the University of Minnesota; George Mason University; and the City University of Hong Kong. The co-author team includes Melinda R. Weathers, Deepti Ganapathy, Marceleen M. Mosher, Teresa Myers, Neha Gour, John Kotcher, Edward W. Maibach, Mulin Jiang, Qianying Ye, and Fei ‘Chris’ Shen.