Health-related climate adaptation: How to innovate and scale global action for local needs

Solutions for adapting healthcare to meet the threats posed by climate change remain immature. Enabling innovation and scaling solutions is a critical priority to protect vulnerable populations around the world.

At a glance:

Managing the threats posed by climate change to human health requires a rapid upscaling of adaptation interventions. This will entail innovation in new interventions that can better meet healthcare needs driven by climate risk, for example, managing heat stress and supply chain resilience. It will also involve initiatives to scale interventions that are immature or not widely adopted in regions most vulnerable to climate risk, including through new policy, financial, or implementation models.

This article highlights three areas of opportunity for innovation and the scaling of solutions that specifically target climate-related health challenges: 1) medical products and technologies that seek to reduce the burden of climate change on health; 2) health-related climate surveillance, early-warning, and response systems; and 3) climate-resilient healthcare infrastructure, supply chain, and workforce capabilities.

Actors across the global public health ecosystem could consider three relevant enablers: establishing ecosystems of research and innovation that are grounded in local contexts and offer support for more targeted product development; market-shaping incentives that strengthen the economic sustainability of solutions and promote investment in climate and health innovations, including from the private sector; and integration of climate criteria into health policy and investment decisions that can encourage an uptake of climate-resilient healthcare solutions and the development of health-informed early-warning systems.