Climate Change and Health

This strategic objective responds to the growing threat that climate change poses to health in the 21st century. Climate change weakens the determinants of health, exacerbates vulnerabilities and fragilities in health systems (for example, through direct damage to facilities and disruption of service delivery), intensifies other threats to health services, increases the burden of vector-borne and other climate-sensitive diseases, and widens health inequalities, with vulnerable groups and disadvantaged countries disproportionately affected by its direct and indirect impacts.

This objective recognizes the central role of WHO and health-sector actors in generating and promoting evidence-based interventions to address the health risks associated with climate change and to ensure that adaptation and mitigation measures contribute to resilient health systems and promote the health and well-being of all people.

The increasing urgency and political momentum to address climate change present an important opportunity for improving health by ensuring climate-resilient health systems and a sustainable environment, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, protecting nature, and safeguarding health from the broad range of current and future climate impacts, including displacement and loss of livelihoods.

Such a transformative agenda places health and well-being at the heart of efforts to protect the planet and its people, and to advance the transition to cleaner energy and healthier, more sustainable diets, transport systems, and mobility. In doing so, it also facilitates synergies between climate-change adaptation and mitigation agendas (for example, low-carbon health systems can enhance climate resilience).

This work also puts health and well-being at the center of efforts to protect people in vulnerable and marginalized situations, including women, children and adolescents, persons with disabilities, Indigenous communities, as well as migrants, displaced populations, and older adults. The agenda supports an enhanced One Health approach.

Joint Outcome 1.1: More climate-resilient health systems addressing health risks and impacts

Health systems must be able to anticipate, respond to, recover from, and adapt to climate-related shocks and stresses in order to ensure sustained capacity for delivering essential services. Climate-related risks to health systems and to health and nutrition outcomes will be systematically assessed and managed, in alignment with progress toward universal health coverage, the expanded primary-health-care approach, and the broader societal goal of climate-change adaptation.

This work will build on and advance existing activities aimed at strengthening health, water, sanitation, nutrition, and food systems. Climate-informed health decision-making will be promoted, with attention to the distinct vulnerabilities and disproportionate impacts of climate change on disadvantaged groups and across regions and subregions, particularly small island developing states.

National health-adaptation plans, grounded in local contexts, will be designed, implemented, and monitored with active community engagement, to promote, support, and enable appropriate behaviors and to ensure that population health remains resilient to climatic shocks and stresses over time.

This outcome encompasses interventions and innovations within health systems (e.g., promoting climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable health facilities and a climate-competent workforce), essential public-health functions (e.g., establishing climate-informed disease surveillance and response, including for vector-borne and foodborne diseases), and collaboration with other sectors to protect key health determinants (e.g., promoting climate-resilient water, sanitation, and food systems).

Joint Outcome 1.2: Low-carbon health systems and communities contributing to improved health and well-being

Plans to reduce, as far as possible, the carbon footprint of health systems, supply chains, and care services will be developed, tailored, and implemented, taking into account different national and local contexts and aligned with national priorities for expanding primary health care and achieving universal health coverage, as well as broader climate-resilience and mitigation efforts.

Work on climate-smart health products and context-sensitive supply chains will be promoted.