World Health Organization / Wellcome Trust strategic collaboration on Climate change and Health 2024-2028

The collaboration will build on WHO and the Wellcome Trust’s shared identification of climate change as a top priority for global health, including its elevation as the first strategic priority in the new WHO General Programme of Work (GPW14).

Guided by a new cross-WHO steering group, the award will support WHO’s functions of (1) Leadership, including the promotion of health within the global climate agenda and vice versa, and empowering health actors. (2) Evidence and data, including: commissioning new global research assessments on the health opportunities of transitioning away from fossil fuels, and investing in climate resilient health systems and climate-informed health emergency systems; guiding the global research agenda; developing methods for key fields, including economic assessment; increasing access to evidence, and monitoring country progress. (3) Capacity building, including training within and outside WHO, increasing health access to climate finance to protect the most vulnerable populations, and technical support to countries.

Overall progress on climate and health, and specifically on the collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, will be tracked through a new indicator framework connecting granular information on deliverables under the leadership, evidence and capacity building domains, as contributions to the high-level climate change and health indicators for GPW14.