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New research led by the University of Michigan contains insights for public health officials and communities in Nigeria as they navigate pregnancies through increasing heat and humidity.

The research team focused on Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, because it has one of the highest fertility rates in the world and is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. But high humidity, which limits people's ability to cool off and increases their risk of heatstroke, has received limited attention from studies investigating the effects of climate change on fertility and human health. That's especially true of low- and middle-income countries, including Nigeria.

This study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how satellite and remotely sensed data can be integrated with large-scale health surveys to change that.

"There's a fair amount of literature in epidemiology that looks at temperature and pregnancy outcomes, but most of it is in the U.S. and other high-income countries," said Nina Brooks, assistant professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, or SEAS. "Humidity plays a really important role in pregnancy heat and we wanted to focus on the role of not just heat, but humid heat."

For data on pregnancies, the team turned to two waves of the Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys, which included information spanning from 2003 to 2016.

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