Refining a Powerful Online Tool Linking Climate Change and Health
The ask: With an increasing number of natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks, the impacts of climate change on human health are more apparent every day. The National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) developed the Climate Change and Human Health (CCHH) Literature Portal as a resource for scholars and professionals to understand and address these problems. But with the rapidly growing volume of scientific publications, NIEHS sought to make the interactive tool more robust, user-friendly, and up to date.
The solution: In 2020, MDB updated and re-launched the CCHH Literature Portal. MDB proposed updates to the portal to increase the breadth of publications included, and has improved functionality with additional search options to make the resources more accessible. For example, the portal now includes more than 250 keywords to refine searches and includes global peer-reviewed research and gray literature published from 2007-21. Users can customize searches with pre-set filters for results organized by geographic location, health impact or exposure pathway, or use a free text search bar to generate and export curated results of the most relevant scientific literature on the health implications of climate change.
To improve the process behind the portal, MDB identified a machine learning tool to support cost-effective screening of search results for inclusion and tagging. We also developed a simple interface for staff to efficiently tag publications with keywords, perform quality checks on data and seamlessly export results in the necessary format to flow into an existing online database that powers the portal.
MDB keeps the portal up to date by carefully curating content, while our library and information scientists continually revise the keyword tags and search strategy to allow the portal to continue to evolve with emerging areas of interest, such as with the recent addition of Coronaviruses to the tool.
Notable outcomes: MDB’s updates have resulted in more than 50,000 screened publications and nearly 10,000 tagged publications added to the portal.
