FHF Summit 2025
Discover what’s happening and when for our 2025 Global Summit!
2025 Cross Cutting Themes
Climate change is impacting our health. It is also harming the health of our planet, which in turn threatens our water and food systems, exposes us to novel pathogens, and denies us peace of mind. Complex environmental determinants of health in the context of climate change demand a new way of thinking, beyond the entrenched disciplines that define current funding streams and many development interventions. How do Planetary Health and One Health inform the nascent Climate and Health field, and how do all relate to one another? What would it mean to further integrate biodiversity and nature conservation principles in our approach to climate and health, alongside WASH, sustainable agriculture, and the other direct determinants of human health, all impacted by global warming? Where are examples of successful system approaches to complicated challenges?
For centuries, the natural world has served as an essential source of inspiration for medical advances in disease control and cure. The critical endangerment of millions of plant and animal species puts further scientific innovation at risk, at a time when climate change is rapidly expanding the reach of most infectious diseases, as well as increasing the likelihood of new ones emerging. What solutions exist to slow the spread of disease in the context of climate change, and keep a buffer zone between humans and novel pathogens? What new medical technologies promise the greatest chance of protection against climate-sensitive disease, while also doing the most to preserve the integrity of nature’s product pipeline?
Dengue is the most drastic example of a climate-sensitive infectious disease. Its surge in geographic expansion and higher transmission rates are directly related to rising temperatures and other environmental changes, and millions of people are at risk. What has complicated the development of a dengue vaccine or therapy? How do public and private sector medical product development processes differ? What challenges are anticipated in scaling solutions, and how is equity being addressed?
Streams and wetlands provide natural protection against the health impacts of drought and reduce the risk of illnesses that stifle growth and cripple economies. Pollution and unchecked population encroachment are reducing access to these fundamental resources, just as weather patterns threaten longer periods of drought and encourage dangerous use of increasingly rare fresh water sources. How can natural water sources be preserved and expanded, and used in innovative ways that protect human health? What innovations in wastewater treatment are best suited to the escalating challenges brought on by climate change?
Buffet lunch and table topics
An essential component of climate resilience is the underlying health of vulnerable communities, which depends in large part on reliable access to ample food and nutrients. Yet climate change is upending food systems, nutrition, and nutrition-related health through its impact on agriculture and livestock production, just as those expanding practices lead to increasing degradation of natural resources and accelerate the pace of global warming. What innovations in sustainable agriculture offer our greatest chance of reliably nourishing increasing populations, while protecting sources of natural carbon sequestration? Which solutions are most critical to more efficient and sustainable land use and supply chains?
Anthropogenic climate change is driving higher temperatures around the world and putting millions at risk in an increasingly urban world. Progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not prevent the continued elevation of heat and increasing duration, and an associated rise in cardiovascular disease, hypertension, kidney disease, migraines, and other debilitating conditions. What are the most promising sources of relief in infrastructure, energy, and nature-based solutions, and which of them avoid confounding the problem? What particular strategies are needed in response to heat-related migration, and the unique effects of heat in cities?
Snacks and table topics
Join us for a celebration of innovation in climate and health
Through three separate UN framework conventions, countries are working to effect change through the integration of key principles in policy and planning. UNCBD’s recently resolved Health Action Plan demonstrates the advantages of approaching reform simultaneously and in partnership with WHO. How do we best align, connect, and assimilate to combat climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification, through Nationally Determined Contributions, Adaptation Plans, and other policy?
Drawing from his doctoral research, Kevin Linn will explore the critical gaps that persist in advancing climate and health priorities and the need to accompany any direct investment in solutions with indirect investment in enabling climate change and health innovation—like data, conceptual frameworks, and collective goals and targets. How can donors and policymakers make sense of the fragmented pathways through which climate factors impact health, and how can we use existing global development goals as a foundation for defining and measuring success in climate-health adaptation?
Standardized climate and health impact indicators are long overdue, and their absence hampers our ability to prioritize investment, evaluate ‘best buys’, and transparently monitor country-level progress in building climate resilient health systems. Who should lead an effort to standardize climate and health metrics? What regional collaboration can help set and enforce standards and use data to advocate more effectively? Could harmonized climate-health indicators be used as the outcome by which all adaptation investments are measured?
Adaptation measures are urgently needed to ensure more climate-resilient health systems in low- and lower-middle income countries. The World Health Organization publishes guidelines for gauging progress at the country level suggesting measurement should be based on contextual data and convention. How are countries monitoring the impact of their adaptation efforts and against what baseline? What systems and governance are needed to allow public health systems to benchmark their own improvement against other countries in their region?
Forecasting Healthy Futures is partnering with Accenture to develop a new report on private sector engagement toward the impacts of climate change on health and nutrition. Analysts will share preliminary insights from their research across ten industries, to reveal how multinational corporations are being impacted by climate change and how they are building resilience to improve health and nutrition outcomes for their employees, communities, and customers. What are some of the most innovative industry initiatives? Where do we need more information and action? What are the opportunities for stronger engagement from corporate changemakers?
The Lancet Countdown Commission reported that 10 of the 15 indicators health-related climate indicators hit alarming new records in 2024.
As the health impacts of climate change reach new levels, there is growing urgency for action and investment to meet current health needs and reduce future risks. Over the past three decades in global health, we’ve seen how collaborative healthcare models and investments can drive the kind of meaningful, durable, and sustainable change that is needed to address new and emerging threats to our health. This session will explore the future of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and opportunities to accelerate climate x health action. Panelists will discuss the role of public-private partnerships in accelerating impact and innovation, strategic collaboration with the public sector to ensure innovation is scalable and solutions are aligned with long-term equitable health goals, and what’s needed to translate ambition into action.
Moderator: Franciscka Lucien, Senior Director, Health Equity, Clinton Global Initiative
Maria Sol Pintos Castro, Deputy Head, Private Sector Engagement, The Global Fund
Raising new resources to respond to global health challenges requires committed champions, collaborative effort, and consensus messaging. The most successful and sustained movements include central coordination but have distributed capacity for advocacy at the domestic level as well. What will it take to develop adequate demand for investment in climate-resilient health systems in countries most at risk? What incremental capacity is needed to elevate country-level voices and compel urgent action?
At COP29 in Baku, the Azerbaijani Presidency launched a historic initiative: the Baku COP Presidencies Continuity Coalition on Climate and Health, uniting past and future UNFCCC COP Presidencies to ensure that health becomes increasingly central to the global climate agenda. This working-style conversation will explore how the Coalition can create a practical, forward-looking platform to encourage transformative commitments and investments in climate-resilient health systems—and to track those commitments over time: how they are implemented, what impact they have, and what lessons can be learned. Participants will also consider the structure and tools the Coalition will need to operationalize these goals in advance of COP30 in Belém—whether through shared reporting mechanisms, public dashboards, country-level investment tracking, or other initiatives coordinated through the Coalition’s WHO Secretariat.
Development finance institutions apply different criteria to their lending strategies and grantmaking decisions. In 2024, the World Bank convened a working group of multilateral development banks to explore a harmonized approach to lending for climate and health, to avoid duplication of effort and maximize coverage throughout climate-impacted countries most in need. More recently, a consortium of major philanthropies and other donors established the Climate and Health Funders’ Coalition for similar purpose. What progress has each initiative made in level-setting their standards and evaluations for easy comparison and prioritization? What differences and challenges were revealed in the process? Can this alignment lead to joint planning and optimized portfolios?
Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, and India incorporate innovative financing mechanisms, venture capital initiatives, and targeted investments to drive innovation in climate adaptation in its health sector and by funding startups in sustainable agriculture, water treatment, and other health-determining sectors.
Progress toward universal health coverage and other SDG targets is threatened by climate change, at a time when development resources have plateaued, and domestic budgets are weighed down by debt servicing expense. Innovative financing methods can help by including debt-for-health swaps to increase domestic spending, blended finance to attract private investment, guarantees to attract risk-averse investors to empower private sector health service delivery, and by working closely with ministries of health to find efficiencies in local spending on climate response and resilience. How can public-private partnerships, results-based financing, and income-contingent loans be better applied in raising capital and achieving efficiencies? What other innovative strategies are emerging as the need for climate-health financing grows?
In 2024, the World Bank approved a $1.57 billion loan package for Nigeria, targeting improvements in health, education, and climate resilience. How were the components of this financing developed and negotiated across sectors? What role did domestic budgets or private sector partners play in shaping the financing? What lessons can be learned from the process, as countries move to access climate adaptation funds for investment in more resilient health systems?
A 2024 World Bank report asserts that the health-related economic impact of climate change could amount to as much as $20.8 trillion by 2050, based on analysis of just some of the direct pathways. The report underscores the urgent need for bold climate-health action to avoid or lessen these impacts, emphasizing that the cost of inaction far outweighs the investment needed for health sector adaptation in response to the threat of climate change. How has this quantitative analysis changed the calculus for lending decisions and donor strategies? What other data would further inform our understanding of the risks at hand?
Confident investment in health-sector climate adaptation requires quantitative assessment and prioritization of risk, which is increasingly feasible through sophisticated satellite and data sources, informed climate and disease models, and advances in artificial intelligence. Investment decisions also benefit from more quantitative and harmonized indicators of climate resilience, to evaluate the relative impact of specific health sector interventions, and to monitor progress over time. How is data and AI being used to better direct climate adaptation investment, and what more is needed? How can AI overcome data access barriers, particularly in low- and middle-income countries? To what extent should health system resilience metrics reflect strengths and weaknesses in health-determinant sectors like agriculture and WASH?
Get regular updates about the FHF Summit.