Calls to counter climate change are nothing new, though they've hit a unique crescendo in recent days following a moral case made by Pope Francis for addressing a problem he acknowledged has been caused largely by humans.

U.S. officials now also are arguing for the need to combat climate change by highlighting an area they say stands to suffer greatly from global warming: human health.

"It is certainly time to take action," U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said at a White House summit on Tuesday. "I would say it's well past time, in fact."

The summit gathered health experts and environmental activists to discuss the impact of climate change on health and how to protect the public. Warming global temperatures are said to increase the incidence of everything from lung problems and infectious diseases to allergy issues and weather-related injuries.

"It's something we can increasingly see and feel as we step out our front doors," President Barack Obama said in a brief video speech that aired at the event, citing extreme droughts, high heat waves and smog. "The costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action."

Tuesday's event came on the heels of a report released by the Environmental Protection Agency outlining the health, economic and environmental impacts that will occur if the world does not act to mitigate carbon pollution. Among its findings: 57,000 people in the U.S. could die each year from poor air quality by 2100 without action on climate change.

The summit also came just a day after new research published online in the British medical journal The Lancet showed climate change has the potential to increase the spread of disease, cause certain foods to be unavailable and increase the prevalence of allergies and asthma.

Looking past human health alone, a study released last week also found that 75 percent of the earth's "familiar" species will be wiped out within just three human lifetimes – in part because of climate change.

"When climate change is framed as a health issue, rather than purely as an environmental, economic, or technological challenge, it becomes clear that we are facing a predicament that strikes at the heart of humanity," Lancet editor Richard Horton and Lancet Asia editor Helena Hui Wang said in a statement. "Health puts a human face on what can sometimes seem to be a distant threat."

According to the Trust for America's Health, excessively high temperatures, heavy downpours, wildfires, severe droughts, permafrost thawing, ocean acidification, sea-level rise and other extreme weather events all have potentially dangerous implications for public health.

"We know that, as climate and weather patterns shift, they contribute to the emergence of new diseases and the re-emergence or spread of diseases that were nearly eradicated or thought to be under control," Jeffrey Levi, the organization's executive director, said in a statement. "As changes in temperature and weather patterns allow pathogens to expand into different geographic regions, some vector- and zoonotic-borne diseases may increase along with foodborne and waterborne diseases."

Along with Tuesday's summit came the announcement of various initiatives aimed at combating the detrimental health impacts of climate change, including a national "heat health information system" being built by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and commitments from the higher education sector to increase climate change knowledge for those planning to go into health care fields.

The summit additionally focused on the health effects of climate change on vulnerable populations, including children. According to the American Lung Association, children are especially susceptible to harmful effects of changes in air quality and their environment because their lungs are not fully developed. Children with asthma – of whom there are more than 1 million in the U.S. – are at an even greater risk. Overall, the percentage of Americans with asthma has more than doubled during the past three decades.

"Climate change has the potential to exacerbate disparities in health, such as after extreme weather events or heat events," Murthy said. "The people disproportionately affected by these events are often the poor, the elderly, children – essentially those that are vulnerable in our society."

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat and the first nurse to be voted into Congress, noted that climate change particularly hurts children of color. "These are not just environmental issues," she said at the summit. "These are social justice issues."

The Obama administration has made combating climate change a priority through its Climate Action Plan unveiled two years ago. Through various measures – such as cutting emissions from power plants – the plan aims to cut nearly 6 billion tons of carbon pollution through 2030, or the equivalent of taking more than 1.2 billion cars off the road for a year, according to the White House.

The White House and advocates at the summit also sent an unabashed message at the gathering: There would be no discussion there on whether climate change is real. The focus instead would be on how the country should act in response.