Active Climate, Earth & Environment Public Health & Healthcare

IPCC-Wellcome co-sponsored Expert Meeting on Climate Change and Health

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation University of Alberta
Funding £145K
Period May 2025 — Oct 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is bringing together world-leading health experts to ensure its next major assessment reports put human health at the centre of climate science. This matters because the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Reports (AR7) will form the scientific backbone of global climate negotiations. Previous assessments have included health evidence unevenly, leaving policymakers without clear, policy-relevant information on how climate change directly harms people—through heat stress, infectious disease spread, food system disruption, and mental health impacts—or what effective responses look like. If this expert meeting succeeds, the resulting guidance notes and recommended actions will shape how every chapter of AR7 addresses health. That means negotiators, health ministries, and local planners will have consistent, robust evidence linking climate policy choices to real human outcomes. The impact flows through systems most people rarely think about: public health surveillance networks, emergency heatwave response protocols, vaccine distribution planning, and agricultural adaptation strategies. This is not fundamental science—it is a deliberate effort to mainstream existing health evidence into a high-stakes policy process. The outcome could determine whether climate adaptation funding reaches the interventions that actually save lives.

View original technical description
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prepares its Seventh Assessment Reports (AR7), there is a critical opportunity to mainstream health content into all AR7 products. Since the IPCC reports provide the scientific foundation for global climate change negotiations, a robust health assessment across all IPCC products can ensure that decision-makers are equipped with policy-relevant evidence of climate-health risks and effective responses. To enable and support this, we propose an Expert Meeting on Climate Change and Health, co-sponsored by the IPCC and Wellcome Trust, and supported by the Climate Change and Global Health (CCGH) Research Group at the University of Alberta. This IPCC-Wellcome Trust Co-sponsored Expert Meeting will connect world-leading climate-health experts from each World Health Organization region to identify opportunities to bolster health assessment and include the strongest available health evidence across all AR7 products. Led by a Scientific Steering Committee, outputs include pre-workshop resources (e.g. health gap analysis of AR6) and post-workshop products (e.g. IPCC guidance note to authors, recommended actions, and mechanisms). CCGH Research Group will facilitate planning, implementation, and development of supportive resources. Keywords: Climate Change, Health, IPCC, AR7, Mitigation, Adaptation, Resilience, Climate Policy, Climate-Health Evidence, Expert Meeting

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Sherilee Harper (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

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Support for IPCC's 7th assessment report meetings

Original classification

Discretionary Award

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