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

Australia has a diverse climate and population. This context provides a unique opportunity to define the health implications of extreme heat exposure during pregnancy and extrapolate findings to a global context. This multidimensional proposal encompasses individual, population, and discovery science data. Three key aims encompass our proposal: 1) Lived Experience which includes Indigenous and recent migrant knowledge, 2) Environmental Epidemiology across the breadth of Australian climate zones, and 3) Biological Mechanisms utilising our established sheep model of pregnancy in environmentally controlled housing and human samples. These aims, along with community co-design and consultation, will lead to the development of approaches to minimise the adverse effects of extreme heat in pregnancy. The deliverables will include health education approaches for individuals and health care workers, identification of clinical applications for health management of pregnant patients in the heat, and development of new public health and policy approaches to preparedness, responsiveness, and secondary prevention for pregnant women in extreme heat.