Integrated Climate and Health Monitoring

Scope and purpose  Member States are calling for steps to be taken by the international community to support their capabilities to understand, monitor, anticipate, and better prepare for climate related health risks, spanning impacts on communicable and non-communicable diseases, nutrition, mental health, and direct and indirect impacts and injuries of extreme weather.     This meeting, co-convened by WMO, WHO, Wellcome Trust, and Rockefeller Foundation will bring together relevant actors from the fields of both health and climate to define and align concrete actions to strengthen the ability of health information systems to routinely integrate and use climate and weather information. A foundation of sound data platforms at country level is critical to further unlock application opportunities such as research, health early warning systems, risk assessment, and climate informed service delivery.   The WHO has a long-standing collaboration with the WMO to facilitate partnerships between national, regional, and global meteorological authorities, Ministries of Health, and experts. This provides the institutional basis to ensure that the new technologies, innovations, and international initiatives that are emerging in this field are grounded in country realities, and can deliver effective and sustainable gains in health. This meeting provides an opportunity for the health and climate community to learn from each other and to jointly advance and align their approaches to climate-informed health surveillance, including climate and health data policy and management.  Objectives and Expected Outcomes  The specific objectives of the meeting are to: 1.    Articulate a common approach, action agenda and requirements for the integration of climate/weather information into health information systems for selected diseases and health hazards, led by the needs and priorities of country and regional level programming. 2.    Share information on relevant initiatives, practices and innovations on climate-informed health surveillance and early warning systems, and identify potential gaps for their operationalization at country level. 3.    Build partnerships for data and information infrastructure; norms, standards and technical guidance; capacity building and operationalization at country level; donor investment. 4.    Outline a 3-year action agenda for integrated climate and health data and surveillance systems.