Climate Change and Health
WHO has been working on climate change and health for over 25 years - advocating, collecting evidence and providing comprehensive support to countries in dealing with health effects of climate change.
Research Agenda for Action on Climate and Health
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REACH will establish shared, forward-looking research priorities to meet the evidence needs of policy makers, program implementers, and advocates in protecting against and responding to the health impacts of climate change.
To inform the development of REACH, WHO is holding a series of virtual technical consultations in 2024 and 2025 with a broad spectrum of stakeholders.
Climate change and health: state of the evidence
Climate change is widely recognized as one of today’s defining health challenges, and addressing the interlinked challenges of climate change and health is a priority for WHO. The scale of research on climate change and health has increased in recent years alongside the rapidly expanding engagement of research institutions and health professionals in climate and health work. Countries are also making meaningful new commitments to climate and health action, through initiatives like the WHO hosted network Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health (ATACH). However, a significant gap remains between the urgency of and commitments to action, and progress towards global climate and health goals. While many factors contribute to this gap, knowledge generation is one key element needed to unlock action. In the 2021 WHO global health and climate change survey of national ministries of health, countries report that insufficient evidence is a leading barrier to implementing national health and climate change plans.
REACH goal and objectives
The growing urgency of and political momentum to tackle climate change is a crucial opportunity to improve health by ensuring climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable health systems, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting nature, and protecting health from the wide range of current and future impacts of climate change, including displacement and loss of livelihoods.
Achieving these goals will also require new types of evidence and new ways of generating research. REACH aims to close the gap between research and action to: i) increase engagement between the research community and the end-users of research evidence and ii) spark a more demand-driven approach to research informed by the needs and priorities of decision makers and local communities.
REACH will update WHO’s 2009 Global Research Priorities for Protections Health from Climate Change and builds on WHO’s 2021 climate and health research gaps report.
Key objectives:
2. Foster stronger alignment between the research community and those who use research evidence for decision making – communities, program implementers, policymakers and others.
3. Expand the scale and maximize the impact of climate change and health research funding, guiding funding partners to support research aligned with community and decisionmaker needs.
4. Advance inclusive, equitable research that centers and meets the priorities of the most at risk of climate change.
REACH will define global research priorities, informed by and reflective of the unique priorities of each WHO region, and thus laying the groundwork for region and country-specific agendas. REACH will focus specifically on research and evidence generation priorities for climate and health, including how research can support efforts to overcome implementation challenges and the translation of evidence into policy.
REACH process and technical consultations
REACH will be developed in collaboration with researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from research institutions, civil society organizations, government agencies, and international institutions spanning a wide range of sectors and across all WHO regions.
The first stage of the agenda-setting process included a review of systematic reviews on climate change and health, a review of existing research agendas and agenda-setting activities in climate change and health, a scan of funder calls for research on climate and health, and in-depth key informant interviews with experts and practitioners in the field. The second stage will include a series of consultative workshops designed to identify research gaps and needs in climate change and health and prioritize these through identification of high-impact, actionable research themes.
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Credits
The REACH agenda will outline the broad research priorities for the climate and health field, highlighting the major research gaps and needs and pointing towards opportunities for collaboration to drive evidence to action.
REACH will cover the breadth of research domains relevant for climate change and health, which can subsequently be expanded upon through development of deep dive research agendas and specific research questions for thematic focus areas or targeted agendas for priority regions or countries. The REACH agenda will be accompanied by guidance for key stakeholder groups on how to use the agenda, and a set of dissemination materials (e.g., infographics, slide-decks).
REACH will enable linkages to other related research agendas across WHO and from external partners, and which can be updated with further thematic deep dives on a dedicated webpage. Other outputs may include academic journal articles, policy briefs, and tools to guide the development of thematic and local research agendas on climate and health.
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