Climate change is a health crisis that is causing escalating negative impacts on the lives and health of global communities, widening health disparities, increasing poverty, and threatening healthcare delivery, necessitating preparedness and comprehensive capacity-building across the health sector. The African Region contributes the least to the cause of this crisis, yet it bears the greatest burden of suffering. Climate change has already caused significant health impacts through extreme weather and natural disasters like bushfires, floods, and mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue. Both urban and rural areas face increasing exposure to extreme heat and poor air quality, harming health and wellbeing. Climate-driven drought will impact agriculture, nutrition, and access to clean water, affecting infants, small children, pregnant women, and the impoverished. These cascading health effects present urgent challenges to African health systems.
To meet these challenges, current and future health professionals in Africa must understand the dynamics governing the interactions of climate and health, the level of scientific understanding of those interactions, and potential adaptation, mitigation, and resilience-building solutions. Furthermore, they need to be able to apply these principles to individual and population-level health needs to devise meaningful prescriptions and public health solutions for individuals and locals. Education is crucial, but the climate and health field lacks experts, knowledge, and educational programs. To address this, it’s essential to enhance the knowledge and skills of researchers, clinicians, public health practitioners, emergency responders, educators, healthcare leaders, and policymakers. This will help them better protect society’s health and well-being. The health sector must prepare for climate-related impacts and adapt to ensure continuity of operations and reduced environmental impact. Effective communication with the public about these changes is also vital.
The Africa Climate and Health Responder Course, developed through a partnership between the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (GCCHE), the Association of Schools of Public Health in Africa (ASPHA), CDC-Africa, WHO AFRO, Project ECHO, and the CHANCE network will address this critical need.
The Course’s key goals are to:
- Enhance the knowledge, confidence, and communication abilities of current and future health professionals concerning the climate crisis to: 1) improve population care and public health practice and 2) serve as credible advocates within their institutions, communities, and professional domains.
- Equip interested current health professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to educate their institutions’ own learners so that health effects of climate change and emergency preparedness can be incorporated more easily into pre- and post-licensure training across the globe.
- Build and strengthen an agile and informed community around climate and health education, advocacy, and policy for health professionals with strong mentorship and expert support.
- Engage health researchers in Africa about climate and health research agendas and current pathways to funding support.
