Dr. Madeleine Thomson has developed a sophisticated educational approach to help health professionals and policymakers understand the critical distinctions between climate variability and climate change, and how both phenomena affect health outcomes. Her educational framework addresses common misconceptions while providing practical guidance for incorporating climate information into health decision-making processes.

Thomson’s educational approach begins with clear definitions that distinguish between climate variability and climate change. She explains that climate variability includes natural fluctuations in climate conditions over months to years, such as El Niño and La Niña cycles, while climate change refers to longer-term shifts in average climate conditions typically measured over decades to centuries.

Her educational framework emphasizes that both climate variability and climate change have important implications for health outcomes, but they operate on different timescales and require different types of responses. Thomson teaches that understanding these differences is crucial for developing effective health adaptation and preparedness strategies.

Thomson’s approach demonstrates how climate variability can have immediate, measurable impacts on disease transmission patterns. Her educational materials show how El Niño and La Niña events affect regional temperature and precipitation patterns, creating conditions that either favor or inhibit vector-borne disease transmission in different regions and seasons.

She emphasizes in her educational work that health professionals working on disease control are primarily dealing with climate variability rather than long-term climate change. As Thomson explains, if you are down in the weeds as a malaria