Extreme heat and pregnancy complications: harnessing the diverse Australian climate and population for global answers

The project is funded by the Wellcome Trust and supported by the University of Western Australia, Australian National University, Menzies School of Health Research, Telethon Kids Institute, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne and Curtin University.

Four-year project currently underway (2023-2027)

Australia has a diverse climate and population. This provides a unique opportunity to define the health implications of extreme heat exposure during pregnancy and extrapolate findings to a global context. This intricate project encompasses individual, population, and discovery science data. Three key factors influence the work involved:

• Lived experience, including Indigenous and recent migrant knowledge.
• Environmental epidemiology across the breadth of Australian climate zones.
• Biological mechanisms utilising our established sheep model of pregnancy in environmentally controlled housing and human samples.

These factors, along with community co-design and consultation, will help develop approaches to minimise the adverse effects of extreme heat in pregnancy. We will create health education approaches for individuals and health care workers, identify clinical applications for health management of pregnant patients in the heat, and develop new public health and policy approaches to preparedness, responsiveness, and secondary prevention for pregnant women in extreme heat.

We hope this project will facilitate:

• Development of climate-zone and weather event specific health education to minimise the adverse effects of heat in pregnancy.
• Identification of affected biological pathways for future global clinical applications to promote the health of pregnant women in extreme heat.
• Prediction of the future health burden of pregnancy complications attributed to heatwave exposure in specific climate zones.

Through the project’s connection with the HEAL Network and its International Reference Group, we will translate our work to develop new public health approaches with global context for preparedness, responsiveness, and secondary prevention of pregnant women in extreme heat.