How can healthcare systems become more resilient to the impacts of climate change?

Abstract

A child born in 2023 faces a far more unpredictable future than we have known for decades. Since the 1960s, the number of weather-related natural disasters has tripled (“Climate Change and Health” n.d.) and the past year saw the breaking of temperature records on every continent (“2022 Saw Record Temperatures in Europe and across the World | Copernicus” n.d.). Collectively, these changes threaten the health, environment and food security of billions of people. Despite the unequivocal body of evidence for accelerating climate change, fossil fuel production continues to expand, weakening our hold on global warming targets agreed to secure future planetary health. The degree of global anxiety for the health of the next generation is plain in the publication of guidance in 2019 on how to ‘ensure that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate’ (Watts et al. 2019). The burden of climate change impacts will not be shared equally – of 250,000–400,000 predicted extra deaths from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress, 88% will be amongst children, and 99% in lowand middleincome countries (“Climate Change and Health” n.d.). Even amongst developed healthcare systems, climate change will act as a risk multiplier, strengthening intergenerational cycles of adversity by placing the most vulnerable populations at highest risk of climate-related health conditions. Without urgent and systemic intervention, existing health inequities will widen, with the potential to reverse the health and development gains of the last 50 years (“Human Development Report 2011Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All | United Nations Development Programme” n.d.).