Climate and health resources

We provide a range of resources to support climate-smart health care implementation. These resources include guides, webinars, videos, and more to help you begin and continue a journey to reduce health care emissions and increase climate resilience in your health facilities and systems.

Summary report
Elements of climate-resilient healthcare

This document presents the key recommendations from Health Care Without Harm's global network internal scoping assessment on climate-resilient health care. It proposes a set of elements centered on enabling the sector to proactively address the challenges posed by climate change and build climate-resilient systems while reducing its environmental footprint and prioritizing equitable access to healthcare.

Report
Suffocating under fossil fuels

Suffocating under fossil fuels: The climate crisis and the threat to health and well-being is a guidance document on climate change and its health impacts, developed for health professionals in South Africa. This resource was developed by groundWork with the support of Health Care Without Harm, and was endorsed by the Public Health Association of South Africa (PHASA).

GUIDE
Anchored by health care: Strategies for health systems

This document supports health care organizations in thinking critically about a specific project or initiative while shifting the work to focus on community engagement to drive more systemic change. Health Care Without Harm believes that communities know what is best for their community, and the involvement of local stakeholders and partners from the start is critical to equitable processes and lasting progress.

Guide
A “Climate-Smart Health Care” approach: Mitigation and Anchoring Community Resilience

This 2017 World Bank report, co-produced with Health Care Without Harm, provides a new approach to bridge the gap between adaptation and mitigation in the health sector. Climate-Smart healthcare encompasses both low-carbon and resilience strategies in an overarching framework rather than treating mitigation and adaptation solutions as separate approaches.

Guide
Climate Action: A Playbook for Hospitals

This playbook captures examples of the many ways Health Care Climate Council members are moving toward climate-smart health care. The playbook is intended to inspire hospitals to engage further in climate action, and provide a vivid path forward to achieving measurable progress and outcomes. 

REPORT
COVID-19 and climate-smart health care: Health sector opportunities for synergistic response to the COVID-19 and climate crises

This report from the World Bank, Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice, coauthored by Health Care Without Harm, and supported by the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) focuses on how low-carbon and climate-resilient health solutions present opportunities to tackle the converged crises of the current pandemic, those in the future, and climate change.

Webinar
The WHO Leadership on the Road to COP26

As part of the COP26 Health Programme, the Health Care Without Harm is working alongside the COP26 Presidency, the World Health Organization, and the UNFCCC Climate Champions to engage countries and stakeholders on climate and health. This webinar, held on June 10, 2021, provides an overview of the COP26 Health Initiatives on Climate Resilient Health Systems and Low Carbon Sustainable Health Systems.

Video
British Ambassador to Indonesia and Timor Leste supports health care decarbonization

Ambassador Jenkins discusses the importance of recognizing health care system vulnerability against climate change, and health care’s role as a major global carbon emitter. He supports Health Care Without Harm’s Road Map as a useful tool to help health systems understand how to prevent carbon emissions while also ensuring the protection of climate impact vulnerable communities