July Round-Up

Climate-health policy is heavy on declarations but still lacking the funding, data, and structural change needed to back them up.

Climate-health governance is long on commitments, short on funding and structural integration

• New Report Finds Global Security Hinges on Climate Action, Health Investment and Peacebuilding, Global Climate & Health Alliance
  The report argues that shifting investment from climate and health to the military will not deliver security, calling instead for sustained investment in climate-resilient communities and health systems, universal clean energy access, stronger multilateral cooperation, and international humanitarian law.

• Submission by Global Climate & Health Alliance for Belém Mission 1.5, Global Climate & Health Alliance
  The report identifies practical ways to strengthen health in climate action, urging governments to embed health in climate policy, prioritize high-impact health solutions in adaptation and emissions plans, and improve international coordination by making health central to climate decision-making and public communication.

• Multilateral giants explore new climate-health collaboration, Devex
  In a first, The Global Fund and the Green Climate Fund are exploring a partnership to jointly finance climate-health programs in vulnerable countries — a move that could create a new model for funding climate adaptation where it has long struggled to attract investment.

• WHO launches advocacy, communications and partnerships plan on the health response to climate change, air pollution and energy poverty, WHO
  The new advocacy, communications and partnerships plan ensures the political commitments made by Member States at the World Health Assembly in 2025 are matched by practical strategies to build momentum, unite stakeholders and deliver lasting health and climate benefits.

• Linking Health and Climate Action: 5 Recommendations for COP31, Impakter
  Recommendations call for a systemic transformation beyond energy transition, placing health at the center of climate and just transition agendas, accounting for fossil fuel health impacts, aligning finance with health costs and benefits, and strengthening evidence and communication.

• The rise and fall of One Health Policy - A power analysis, UN University
  Mutual collaboration and cooperation, investment driven by local needs not donor priorities, and including community actors in their partnership structures and governance arrangements are needed to make the One Health Network more equitable and inclusive.

• The Climate-Health Crisis Needs Money, Not More Declarations, Health Policy Watch
  Since the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate Change & Health was established in 2022, health has gained increasing recognition in climate discourse but has not seen comparable progress in funding.

• Multilateral pathways to just and healthy transitions, Healthcare Without Harm
  While health and just transition are gaining recognition across multilateral spaces, their integration remains in its early stages, presenting an opportunity to build climate transition frameworks that protect the right to health, address inequities, and ensure the health sector’s response to the climate crisis is grounded in fairness.

Vulnerability is structurally produced, cannot be a fixed label

• India’s heat response is missing public health logic, Mongabay
  Although heat exposure is shaped by climate, labour, urban planning, and energy systems, its impacts are ultimately measured in human health—and until health becomes the organizing principle of heat governance, our response will continue to fall short.

• Intersectionality in climate and health equity research, The Lancet
  Climate and health research often frames equity as a list of “vulnerable groups,” overlooking how vulnerability is produced by political, economic, and commercial structures rather than inherent to individuals or communities.

• South India to Develop India’s First Personalized Heat Health Risk Tool, EdPublica
  Because temperature-based heatwave alerts cannot capture individual health risks, researchers in South India are developing a personalized heat-risk tool that links environmental conditions with people’s health profiles to improve heat warnings.

• “When the climate changes, we feel it first”: Gendered perceptions of environmental change and women’s health in Pakistan, Sage Journals
  Gendered perspectives on climate change in rural Pakistan reveal how systemic barriers heighten women’s health risks, highlighting the need for culturally responsive interventions that integrate climate adaptation with women’s health programs.

• Government of Canada partners with Indigenous communities to address the growing health impacts of climate-sensitive diseases, Education News Canada
  Canada is investing $3.3 million over three years in five community-led projects with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities to integrate Indigenous knowledge with Western science on climate and infectious disease.

Measurement and attribution gaps stall action

• The past and future impact of climate change on childhood malaria in Africa, Nature
  Researchers draw on more than a century of clinical data to show that human-caused climate change has increased the burden of childhood malaria across sub-Saharan Africa, with temperature and extreme precipitation driving higher prevalence.

• Seasonal forecasts as public health tools: Preparing Latin America for the 2026 El Niño, PLOS Global Public Health
  Despite uncertainty in forecasting El Niño events due to climate change, the evidence from past events strongly supports investing in health preparedness, as the costs of inaction far outweigh the risks of acting.

• The 2026 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: narrowing window for decisive health action, The Lancet
  The third Lancet Countdown Europe report tracks climate change’s health impacts, adaptation and mitigation efforts, financing, and societal engagement through 2025, adding new indicators and highlighting health inequalities.

• Widening polarization in Americans’ perception of the health harms of climate change (2014–2024), IOPScience
  Although Americans’ awareness of the health harms of climate change is on the rise, these perceptions are strongly politically polarized, and this polarization has increased since 2014.

Climate-health harm is a present, escalating, systemic burden

• Climate, war, and the global health-care supply chain, The Lancet
  The US-Iran war exposed the health sector’s dependence on fossil fuels for essential medical supplies, underscoring how continued reliance on coal, oil, and gas leaves health systems vulnerable to both conflict and climate change.

• Future health and economic impacts of extreme heat on older adults: a subnational analysis for Europe, Environmental Research Letters
  Heat-related health impacts are already imposing substantial economic costs that will grow sharply over time, showing that climate change is not a distant threat but a present and escalating burden on European societies, with future costs to public budgets and population well-being depending on the ambition of today’s mitigation efforts.

• New research traces how ‘forever chemicals’ move through the Great Lakes and into people, Grist
  PFAS chemicals, found in human tissues and linked to health risks including reduced fertility and certain cancers, can enter the body through sources such as contaminated food.