Global Summit on Climate & Health

Welcome

• Kelly Willis & Tala Al Ramahi – Co-Chairs, Forecasting Healthy Futures Global Summit

The Climate Crisis is a Health Crisis

• Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – Director General, WHO (via video)

We stand at an important inflection point at the convergence of: an unprecedented global commitment to prevent further destruction of our planet, a growing understanding of the potential catastrophe facing our human right to health, and the emergence of new knowledge and technologies to build equitable and resilient health systems.

The Lancet Countdown: Monitoring the Health Impacts of Climate Change, and the Health Opportunities of Ambitious Climate Action

• Marina Romanello – Executive Director, Lancet Countdown for Climate and Health Action (via video)

The latest report from the Lancet Countdown details the ways in which global heating is jeopardizing the lives and livelihoods of millions around the world, with more frequent and intense extreme weather events, higher risk of heat-related death, food insecurity and malnutrition, and infectious diseases that will continue to spread more rapidly and in new parts of the world. In a world facing compounding and simultaneous crises, it also identifies glimmers of hope. At this critical juncture, a health-centered response to the converging crisis,  including a prompt transition away from fossil fuels, can today “still secure a future in which world populations can not only survive, but thrive”.

The Future Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health: Filling Knowledge Gaps

• Martin Muchangi – Director, Population Health and Environment, AMREF
• Felipe J Colón-González – Technology Lead, Data for Science and Health, Wellcome Trust​

Experts predict a wide array of future threats and negative health impacts of climate change, and their models differ drastically by disease, determinants, and economic impact. What further investment is needed to accurately describe the challenges, understand the scope and scale of climate-sensitive infectious disease, inform effective policy reform, and ensure equitable access to adaptation opportunities?

Dubai 2023: Inviting Solutions and Real Action 

• His Excellency Majid Al Suwaidi – Director General, COP28

Break

Solutions Spotlight: Changing Education Needs for a Climate-Resilient Health Workforce

• Kimberly Humphrey – Climate Change and Human Health Fellow, Harvard C-CHANGE

In January, Harvard Medical School announced its plans to integrate climate change into its curriculum. But an already overburdened global health workforce is largely unprepared for the massive shifts in burden of disease and novel health risks threatening the communities they serve. What can be done to empower health workers to understand current and future impacts, address them through preventative and clinical care, develop a stronger voice within the climate debate, and ultimately become part of the climate health solution?

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Climate Resilience in Public Health Systems: Essential Building Blocks

• Moderator: Nino Kharaishvili – Global Solutions Director, Jacobs
• Mazen Al-Malkawi – Regional Advisor for Climate and Environment, World Health Organization
• Montira Pongsiri – Senior Advisor, Climate and Health, Save the Children
• Ahmed Elsayed – Executive Director, JPAL MENA
• Resilient health systems are those that maintain continuous improvement of service and outcomes despite environmental pressures, by anticipating threats and recovering from shocks resulting from climate change. What knowledge, intersectoral collaborations, and ongoing research capacity is required to effectively evaluate climate adaptation solutions while avoiding unintended consequences?

Solutions Spotlight: Two Sides of One Coin: Reimagining Healthcare Resilience and Net Zero Roadmaps

• Jane Blake – Global Health Security Director, Jacobs
• Gabrielle Sobel – Health Climate Response Program Manager, Jacobs

Mitigating immediate impacts of climate change and charting a long-term path to reduce carbon footprint are two critical pathways to reverse climate change and improve health resilience.

Lunch

Threats to Global Progress Against Preventable Disease

• Trevor Mundel – President, Global Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (by video feed)

Climate Threats to Malaria and NTD Control & Elimination Programs: Progress at Risk

• Moderator: Priya Kanayson – Manager, Advocacy & Communications, Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE)
• Corine Karema – Interim CEO, RBM Partnership to End Malaria
• Joelle Tanguy – External Affairs Director, DNDi
• Do Trung Dung – Head of Parasitology Department, Vietnam National Institute of Malariology, Parasitology, and Entomology (NIMPE)
• Changing rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, and extreme weather events are increasing the incidence and range of vector-borne disease, and complicating efforts to combat and eliminate NTDs. What can be done to build donor coalitions, accelerate the development of new therapies, and identify new solutions in endemic country health systems?

Solutions Spotlight: Public-Private Partnership – Data Philanthropy for Climate Preparedness

• James Golden – Chief Data Officer, Rockefeller Foundation

Accurate and accessible risk forecast systems require millions of data points from multiple sources, collaboratively build algorithms, and advanced computing power. A proposed global resource leverages modern logistics of data and democratization of AI tools, to predict exposure to systemic shocks, drive data-driven policies and response, and inform equitable investment in climate-resilient health systems.

Climate Readiness, Resilience and Response: AI for Disease Prediction & Planning​

• Hosni Ghedira – Director, Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence
• Hammam Riza – President, Indonesia Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology
• Richard Maude – Epidemiology Department Head, Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used to create efficiencies across health systems, in part through its potential to make sense of interrelated climate trends and other variables for purposes of predicting risk and preventing disease. What are some of the emerging data sources, which might improve the accuracy of AI-driven models? Can they help optimize prevention programs, allocate adaptation investment, and prevent the next pandemic?

Break

On the Ground Innovations for Climate-Resilient Communities

• Moderator: Bill Pan – Associate Professor, Global Environmental Health, Duke University
• Swati Mahajan – Lead, Health Systems Strengthening, PATH South Asia
• Peace Dziedzom Gbeckor-Kove – Principal Programme Officer, Ghana Environmental Protection Agency
• James Colborn – Senior Advisor, Malaria, Clinton Health Access Initiative

Community engagement and action are essential ingredients of a climate-resilient health system and represent a set of opportunities and current innovations that are frequently overlooked by the formal public health sector. How can environmental initiatives, economic activity, NGOs, and civil society contribute to climate-change mitigation and better-prepared communities?

Reception, Dinner & Networking

Opening Remarks

• Senior UAE & COP28 officials

The Future Stewards: Youth Champions, Their Protection, and Empowerment

• Moderator: Sohini Chatterjee – Managing Director, Malaria No More
• Omnia El Omrani – COP27 Youth Envoy
• Isaiah Thomas – YOUNGO-Official Youth Constituency of UNFCCC
• Mohamed Eissa – Liaison Officer for Public Health Issues, IFMSA
• Deena Mariyam – YOUNGO-Official Youth Constituency of UNFCCC, Health Working Group Secretary
• Youth advocates make up one of the most powerful forces for change in the global effort to stop climate change, and are increasingly active in championing issues specific to the health agenda. What interventions specifically address the unique health challenges facing youth and adolescents amid pressures of climate change? What opportunities exist to unlock their power and persuasion?

Solutions Spotlight: Novel Technology to Improve Disease Control Cost-Effectiveness

• Kaushik Sarkar – Director, Institute for Malaria and Climate Solutions (IMACS)

IMACS’ Malaria Prediction and Planning Tool currently being evaluated in India and adapted for use in Indonesia uses climate predictions, epidemiological data, and program information to support local health systems’ optimized malaria control and elimination efforts. What role does intersectoral collaboration play in ensuring its success? What are the barriers to the uptake of this and similar tools in malaria-endemic countries?

Private Sector Catalysts: Strategic Investments to Unlock Innovation and Inform Climate Adaptation

• Moderator: Buddy Shah – CEO, Clinton Health Access Initiative
• Uzma Sulaiman – Associate Director, Community Jameel
• Fiona Smith-Laittan – Vice President, Global Health, GSK
• Tala Al Ramahi – Director, Reaching the Last Mile

Private foundations provide essential venture funding to test novel concepts. Leading healthcare corporations bring unique value through their research and development programs, as well as solutions for equitable access to medicines. Combined, the private sector has an enormously important role to play in stimulating innovation and testing new approaches to climate solutions for health. How can the private sector’s investment be best leveraged to identify new solutions that will deliver at scale? What approaches will most effectively break down siloes and encourage aligned efforts and collaboration?

Break

Solutions Spotlight: Innovative Incentives to Shape a Healthier Market for Essential Cooling

• Dave Ripin – Chief Science Officer, Clinton Health Access Initiative

Heat could claim 1 million lives per year in India alone by the next century if unaddressed. One initiative hopes to shape markets and steer growing consumer demand toward highly efficient “clean” AC units, which could protect vulnerable populations while avoiding 60 gigatons of CO2 emissions by 2050.

Global Alignment & Effective Positioning: Resonating within the Climate Agenda

• Moderator: Jeni Miller – Executive Director, Global Climate and Health Alliance
• Yacine Djibo – Founder & Executive Director, Speak Up Africa
• Zied Mhirsi – Senior Director, Global Health Strategies
• Ramon San Pascual – Executive Director, Health Care Without Harm SE Asia
• The global health community has an immediate opportunity to increase its voice in the fight against climate change, leveraging mounting evidence of growing mortality and morbidity rates as an incentive for greater government action to reduce carbon emissions, and communicating consensus opinion about the most important policy decisions and investment areas to protect human health from further harm. What is the most effective way to put health at the center of the climate debate where it belongs?

Lunch

Financing Climate Preparedness in the Health Sector: New Solutions to Resourcing

• Moderator: Martin Edlund – CEO, Malaria No More
• Peter Sands – Executive Director, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria
• Tamer Rabie – Founder, World Bank’s Health, Climate and Environment Program
• Farid Fezoua – Director, Health & Education, International Finance Corporation (via Video Feed)
• Massive changes in the way climate adaptation funds are spent will be required to effectively build climate-resilient health systems, continue progress against preventable and communicable diseases, and take climate health solutions to a global scale. What investments can be leveraged to unlock new resources from other sectors and sources? Which approaches to blended financing will be most successful at mobilizing new sources of funding?

Solutions Spotlight: Safe Drinking Water Against Rapidly Mounting Obstacles

• Benjamin Krause – Executive Director, Development Innovation Lab
• Michael Kremer – Nobel Laureate and Professor of Economics, University of Chicago (via video)
• Vini Mahajan – Secretary, Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, India (via video)

Changes in water cycle patterns are making it more difficult to access safe drinking water, melting permafrost may unlock long-frozen bacteria, and rising temperatures are generally correlated with increases in enteric diseases, such as E. coli-associated diarrhea. A new, cost-effective technology could enable India’s Jal Jeevan Mission to ensure safe drinking water for hundreds of millions of households.

Adaptation Funding for Health: Intersectoral partnership for national climate resilience

• Evie Gray – Global Health Communications Manager, GSK
• Hendricks Mgodie – Ministry of Health, Malawi
• Burcu Munyas – Programme Development and Quality Director, Save the Children Malawi

A persistent initiative in Malawi to secure adaptation funds for health system adaptation offers a multifaceted case study of what will be required to mobilize new resources to avoid the devastating impacts of climate change on health and well-being in low- and middle-income countries. How can evidence of harm and risk be generated in the absence of established norms and reliable data sources? Which sectors need to be engaged to design interventions that meet the diverse needs of communities at risk, while avoiding unintended consequences?

Break

Targeted Pre-Deployment of Prevention Interventions: Avoiding After-Effects of Extreme Weather

• Moderator: Colleen Connell – Managing Director, Health Finance Coalition
• Paul Gunstensen – Global Safe Water Director, Evidence Action
• Aysu Uygur – Strategy Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Emma Maynard – Research Manager, Infections and Climate, Wellcome Trust

Many of the disease outbreaks most associated with flooding could be prevented with existing and emerging tools if they were deployed as part of a coordinated package to areas most at risk. Which interventions would make the most effective combined preventative intervention? What kind of centralized resource could support local governments in designing and implementing it?

Closing Remarks and COP28 Priorities in Global Health – UAE leaders and COP28 officials

Reception, Dinner & Networking

Introductory Remarks and Orientation

• COP28 planning team

COP28 Collaborative Roundtables

Intended to leverage the critical voices of those participating in the Forecasting Healthy Future Global Summit, these sessions will debate key priorities in each area and articulate potential “wins” for climate health at COP28, identify 2 – 3 specific target outcomes for COP28, and share information about ongoing initiatives for potential COP28 collaboration.

• Private Sector Catalysts: Hosted by Community Jameel, Forum for the Future, GSK

Exploring the role of the private sector as catalysts at the intersection of climate and health for transformation and acceleration of positive impacts.

• Advocacy for Adaptation: Hosted by the Global Climate and Health Alliance

Exploring opportunities for resource mobilization to protect and improve health in the face of climate change and its impacts.

• Forward Finance: Hosted by the Health Finance Coalition

Using innovative and blended finance to mobilize grant funding and concessional and commercial financing for climate-resilient health systems.

• AI – Beyond Early Warning: Hosted by the Institute for Malaria and Climate Solutions

A closer look at the power of predictive disease systems, investment and research needs, modeling methodologies, barriers to uptake, and novel applications

Lunch & Roundtable Read-Outs

• Presented by Roundtable hosts to the COP28 planning team

Close