Improving Climate Services for Public Health Practitioners in Resource-Constrained Settings
Funded by Burroughs Wellcome Fund
About the Project
The Challenge
Climate-related extreme events are increasing food & water insecurities, leading to malnutrition and diet-related non-communicable diseases.
Public health and nutrition practitioners need access to climate services (information, tools, and training) to tackle the complex health challenges of climate disruption.
Gap in access and utility of climate service among health practitioners as well as questionable contextual and practical utility of tools.
Climate information services for nutrition
The use of climate information and services by the nutrition community to inform the targeting and delivery of these actions has been extremely limited.
Climate information across different timescales have a potential role to play to help address the Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 3 through:
- Risk assessment and continued monitoring,
- Better targeting of near-term responses and interventions,
- Early warnings, preparedness, and early actions, and
- Long-term planning, investment, and resilience.
Climate information and services include:
- The production, translation, transfer, and use of climate knowledge and information in decision-making, policy-making, and planning
- Support climate adaptation by mitigating the negative effects of climate change and variability
- Climate data and information underpinning climate services can include: climatological (past), monitoring (present), and forecast (future) information.
Reports
Building Climate-Resilient Health Systems for Nutrition: Development and Strengthening of Climate Services
by Bianca Carducci, Georgia Dominguez, Jessica Fanzo. May 2025.
Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, Food Security, and Nutrition: Evolving Relationships and Critical Challenges
by Jessica Fanzo, Bianca Carducci, Jochebed Louis-Jean, Mario Herrero, Kevin Karl, and Cynthia Rosenzweig
Annual Review of Nutrition, Vol. 45, April 2025
Climate change, also known as global warming, poses significant challenges for both the planet and humanity. With further warming, every region across the world is projected to increasingly experience concurrent and multiple changes in climate, compounding overall risk. Long-term climate change and near-term extreme weather events have multiple negative effects on food security, diets, and nutrition via complex, multidirectional pathways through food, health, water, and social protection systems. However, measuring climate-attributable malnutrition impacts, especially among the most vulnerable populations, remains challenging. Changes in climate across a range of geographies have been modeled, projected, and observed showing detrimental associations with dietary and nutrition outcomes, particularly undernutrition. Many of these undernourished populations are climate vulnerable due to a variety of determinants challenging their ability to adapt to impending risks. While nutrition integration within climate adaptation plans have lagged, there is momentum for robust collaboration between climate and nutrition communities to fill data gaps that are critical for joint decision-making.