Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. In addition to short-term reproductive health impacts, climate-related events will influence the risks of long-term and intergenerational mortality and morbidity for both birthing parents and offspring. As climate conditions continue to deteriorate in future generations, less healthy parents will give birth to less healthy offspring, who themselves will experience increased risk of reproductive outcomes. This intergenerational process causes a repeating cycle of poor parental preconception health, gestational complications, and poor offspring health, which leads to suboptimal preconception health among those offspring when they reach reproductive age. Because our ongoing efforts mostly focus on helping families achieve and maintain a healthy pregnancy, a critical need to think beyond the infant in our arms and consider the long-term implications of climate change exists. Such efforts may involve policy strengthening efforts to reduce emissions, further engaging health care providers as active advocates, ensuring equitable and sustainable mitigation and adaptable strategies, and conducting more research that yields actionable data to guide policy efforts, especially in regions and populations most affected by climate change.

气候变化是 21 世纪最大的全球健康威胁。除了短期的生殖健康影响外，与气候相关的事件还将影响生育父母和后代的长期和代际死亡率和发病率的风险。随着未来几代人的气候条件继续恶化，健康状况不佳的父母会生下健康状况不佳的后代，而后代自身的生育风险也会增加。这种代际过程导致父母先入为主的健康状况不佳、妊娠并发症和后代健康状况不佳的重复循环，从而导致这些后代在达到育龄时的先入为主的健康状况不佳。因为我们正在进行的努力主要集中在帮助家庭实现和维持健康怀孕，迫切需要超越我们怀抱中的婴儿来思考，并考虑气候变化的长期影响。这些努力可能涉及加强政策以减少排放，进一步让医疗保健提供者成为积极的倡导者，确保公平和可持续的缓解和适应性战略，并开展更多研究以产生可操作的数据以指导政策努力，特别是在受气候变化影响最严重的地区和人群中。气候变化。