Description
The WHO has identified climate change as “the biggest health threat facing humanity”, estimating the phenomenon will directly contribute $2 – 4 billion in health-related financial costs annually by 2030, and 250,000 additional global deaths per year between 2030 and 2050. Exposure to extreme heat is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes, impacts on mental health, worsening cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and exacerbating risks of food insecurity and malnutrition.
Objectives
Health-tech social enterprise reach52 is launching a participatory action research initiative in collaboration with small-holder farmers in specific rural regions of India, Indonesia, Kenya, and South Africa. This project shall measure understanding of climate-health thematic areas; identify priorities to assist in mitigation; and develop/implement responsive community-based campaigns to accelerate impact efforts.
Methodology
During the initial phase, a series of 56 focus group discussions will be facilitated in Homa Bay, Murang’a and Nukuru counties (Kenya); Gauteng and Limpopo provinces (South Africa); Banten province (Indonesia); and Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh states (India). In addition to the principle beneficiaries (small-holder farmer), researchers will also engage with frontline health workers, including Community Health Workers (CHWs), and families of agriculturalists.
These FGD are intended to identify climate-health knowledge gaps, along with priority areas of concern. These findings will inform the development community interventions to be facilitated by allied CHWs, along with accompanying training curricula and health promotion collaterals.
An estimated 300 CHWs across the four implementation countries will be upskilled through in-person training sessions on climate-informed care. Each CHW will also be outfitted with reach52’s mHealth platform ‘access’, supporting campaign coordination and individual-level data collection from beneficiaries. Baseline and endline surveys are employed to measure outcomes of the training sessions among participants.
These upskilled and digitized CHWs will then deliver community engagements through door-to-door visits and group settings. The project is aiming to directly engage a minimum of 165,000 unique beneficiaries through direct interactions with CHWs. Engagements involve: creation of a beneficiary profile on the mHealth platform; health promotion messaging; MUAC screening for acute malnutrition (Kenya and South Africa-only); questionnaire-based screening (TBD based on inputs); and warm referral to care/services as required. These engagements will be supplemented by a public promotional campaign consisting of public banners, posters and flyers in the target geographies.
Following the cessation of engagement activities in Q3 2024, select beneficiaries will be re-engaged by researchers to measure changes to knowledge, attitudes and practices in the selected topic areas of climate-health. Results will be shared with communities, along with the wider global health sector through knowledge translation and dissemination activities.
Specific methodologies are still under development, with implementation expected to commence in Jan 2024.
Results
Interim results will be available to share at GHF 2024.
Disclosure
These activities are funded through the support of Bayer Consumer Health and Crop Science.
World Health Organization. Climate Change. World Health Organization. Published October 12, 2023. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
Romanello M, Napoli CD, Drummond P, et al. The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels. The Lancet. 2022;400(10363).
| Contact Geneva Health Forum | I would like to receive information about the GHF 2024 conference and other GHF activities / Je souhaite recevoir des informations sur la conférence GHF 2024 et d'autres activités du GHF. |
|---|
