On the way to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Conference

Guest blog by Peter Byass, Director of Umeå Centre for Global Health Research, Sweden.

Along with many others around the world, some of our team are on the way to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Conference (technically called COP15, being the 15th Conference Of the Parties). It’s a new kind of opportunity for us as health researchers – not the usual kind of scientific conference, but a key political and policy forum. All the same we want to try and highlight the undoubted effects climate is already having on human health around the world – as we’ve shown in a recent cluster of papers.

Over the next two weeks we’ll be back here posting blogs from time to time with an insiders’ views on what’s happening in Copenhagen, so do check back to see how things develop. You can follow PLoS Medicine on twitter to make sure you don’t miss any of the instalments.

Meanwhile, arriving in Copenhagen over the next few days, people can’t help noticing a poster campaign with the slogan “Help turn Copenhagen into Hopenhagen”. Let’s hope!

Peter Byass is on PLoS Medicine’s editorial board and is the deputy editor of the peer-reviewed open access journal Global Health Action.