Climate - Resilient Aging: A Scoping Review of the Impact of Environmental Stressors on Elderly Health Outcomes in Southeast Asia Region

Climate change and population aging are major challenges that have intensified in recent decades, causing serious health challenges. Environmental stressors, including extreme weather events, rising temperatures, air and water pollutants, droughts, floods, and displacements, directly and indirectly impact human health. Older adults aged 60 years and above are particularly vulnerable due to physiological and psychological changes, decreased mobility, chronic illness, and limited access to healthcare resources. The Southeast Asia Region is particularly vulnerable to climate change and is undergoing rapid demographic transition toward an aging population. Environmental threats such as cyclones, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and pollution can disrupt essential services, displace populations, and increase risks of disease outbreaks, injuries, and mortality among older adults. Climate-related disruptions can also impact psychological well-being through loneliness, emotional discomfort, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress. Despite increasing global attention to climate change and health, evidence linking environmental stressors specifically to elderly health outcomes in Southeast Asia remains fragmented. Existing literature often focuses on individual exposures and provides limited integration of multiple environmental stressors and their combined effects on physical health, mental health, and social well-being. There is also limited synthesis of community-led and policy-driven interventions aimed at promoting environmental resilience among older adults. This scoping review aims to systematically map the current research on the impact of environmental stressors on elderly populations in Southeast Asia and identify community-led interventions to promote resilience among the elderly. Specifically, the review will examine documented correlations between extreme temperature events and air pollution with mortality and morbidity rates, assess the effects of climate-induced disasters on psychological well-being and social isolation, and identify existing community-led and policy-driven interventions that enhance environmental resilience for aging populations. The review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) scoping review methodology and will be reported according to the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Studies from databases including PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, EMBASE, and Web of Science, along with grey literature sources such as WHO reports and government documents, will be included. The review findings are expected to provide a comprehensive overview of the impact of environmental stressors on elderly health outcomes in Southeast Asia and identify areas requiring further research and intervention development to support climate-resilient aging.