WHO Climate change and health team is focusing on the following areas of work:

  • Advocacy and partnerships: coordinating with partner agencies within the UN system, and ensuring that health is properly represented in the climate change agenda, as well as providing and disseminating information on the threats that climate change presents to human health, and opportunities to promote health while cutting carbon emissions;
  • Monitoring and evidence: coordinating reviews of the scientific evidence on the links between climate change and health; assessing country's preparedness and needs when facing climate change; and developing a global research agenda;
  • Supporting countries to protect human health from climate change: strengthening national capacities and improving the resilience and adaptive capacity of health systems to deal with the adverse health effects of climate change;
  • Building capacity on climate change and human health: assisting countries to build capacity to reduce health vulnerability to climate change, and promote health while reducing carbon emissions.

WHO is taking concrete steps to improve its environmental sustainability and reduce its carbon footprint. Learn more about Sustainability practices at WHO.

 

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Unit Head

Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum

Unit Head, Climate change and health

Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum is the Head of the climate change and health unit at WHO Headquarters. He has worked on the issue for over 20 years, playing key roles in the first quantitative estimates of global health impacts of climate change, resolutions of the World Health Assembly, WHO global conferences, and the expansion of WHO’s climate change and health support to over 30 low and middle income countries.

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