Ann­kath­rin von der Haar^a, Marie Jung^a, Mai­ke Voss^a, Fran­zis­ka Mat­thies-Wies­ler^a,b, Karin Geffert ^c,d

^{a Cent­re for Pla­ne­ta­ry Health Poli­cy, Ber­lin
b Helm­holtz Cent­re Munich
c Chair of Public Health and Health Ser­vices Rese­arch, Insti­tu­te for Medi­cal Infor­ma­ti­on Pro­ces­sing, Bio­me­try and Epi­de­mio­lo­gy (IBE), Lud­wig-Maxi­mi­li­ans-Uni­ver­si­tät Munich
d Pet­ten­ko­fer School of Public Health, Munich}

Back­ground

After deca­des of pro­gress in the field of glo­bal health, the effects of advan­cing cli­ma­te chan­ge repre­sent the grea­test health risk of the 21st cen­tu­ry. Vul­nerable popu­la­ti­on groups in par­ti­cu­lar, such as child­ren, the elder­ly or peo­p­le with pre-exis­ting health con­di­ti­ons, are dis­pro­por­tio­na­te­ly affec­ted by cli­ma­te-rela­ted health impacts.

The expe­ri­en­ces of recent deca­des show that public health mea­su­res, such as the pro­vi­si­on of clean drin­king water or access to safe food, have made a signi­fi­cant con­tri­bu­ti­on to redu­cing the glo­bal bur­den of dise­a­se.

To make health­ca­re sys­tems more resi­li­ent to cur­rent and future impacts of cli­ma­te chan­ge on our health, effec­ti­ve mea­su­res are nee­ded across all sectors—particularly public health initia­ti­ves that offer co-bene­fits for health, the envi­ron­ment, and the cli­ma­te. Given the pro­gres­si­on of cli­ma­te chan­ge, it is cru­cial to deve­lop appro­pria­te tools for evi­dence-infor­med decis­i­on-making. The­se tools should help prio­ri­ti­se public health mea­su­res with the grea­test poten­ti­al for cli­ma­te adapt­a­ti­on and miti­ga­ti­on.

The PHONIC (Public Health Opera­tioNs for clImate aCtion) pro­ject aims to deve­lop a prac­ti­cal gui­de for iden­ti­fy­ing prio­ri­ty public health mea­su­res to miti­ga­te and adapt to cli­ma­te chan­ge. The focus of the pro­ject lies on the iden­ti­fi­ca­ti­on of indi­ca­tors and mea­su­res for gover­nan­ce struc­tures accor­ding to the „Essen­ti­al Public Health Operations/Functions“. Strong poli­ti­cal gover­nan­ce in the health sec­tor (and bey­ond) as well as a clear com­mit­ment at the hig­hest level of govern­ment to ack­now­ledge and address the links bet­ween cli­ma­te chan­ge and health in an ambi­tious way are essen­ti­al foun­da­ti­ons for the deve­lo­p­ment and expan­si­on of cli­ma­te-resi­li­ent health sys­tems and socie­ties.

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