What you can do if climate change is harming your community’s health: a practical guide

Climate change is harming the health of the communities you serve. The Certificate peer learning programme for leadership in climate change and health helps you act on it, where you are, with what you have. It is free, it is built from the experience of more than 80,000 health and humanitarian workers, and you can start today.

This guide explains the courses, how to choose one, how each one helps you, how they fit a larger path from a challenge you face to results you can see, and how they grow you as a leader.

Learn more: Read this article to learn about the programme’s history and talk to the evidence generated by health workers about the impacts of climate change on health.

The four courses, and how to choose

Each course is a different door into the same problem.

Pick the one that fits what you face now, and enrol.

Each one is free, works on any phone, and ends with a plan you can act on.

Start here: Learning together to lead change (peer learning course)

This is the first course in the programme, and the best place to begin.

It is built from the experiences of health workers in 68 countries and draws on the 2023 report from more than 1,200 of them.

You learn to recognize climate health problems, adapt your services, and plan practical action.

Choose this for the full picture.

Move fast: What you can do now (peer learning course)

This is the newest course and the quickest route to action. It is built on the May 2026 report, Local action to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis on health, so it carries the latest practice from the field. It covers responding in emergencies, reducing health impacts, and working with your community. Choose this when you want a clear next step.

Connect the sectors: One Health (primer)

Animals are dying in a village.

Children are falling sick from the same water.

The vet writes up one.

The nurse writes up the other.

They have never met.

This primer helps you see those links in your own area and plan one cross-sector action in three months.

Choose this when your problem crosses health, animals, and the environment.

Protect children: Our common ambition (primer)

Built with Save the Children, this primer connects workers in more than 80 countries.

Children born today will face six times more heatwaves than children born sixty years ago.

You gain tools to spot threats to children, strengthen your services, and advocate for what your community needs.

Choose this when children are at the heart of your work.

Start this week

1. Open www.learning.foundation/climate.
2. Click on “Join your first course”.
3. Enter your name and email.
4. If this is your first time registering with The Geneva Learning Foundation, check your email inbox to confirm your registration. Click on the confirmation link in that email. (Check spam if you do not see this email.)
5. Check your inbox again to find the first email about the Certificate programme. Ensure that email communication from TGLF does not get sent to spam. Approve our email as “Not Junk” and mark it as “Safe Sender”.

What makes these courses different

There are no lectures and no tests.

Your own experience is the starting point, and the experience of your peers is the main material.

Each course follows the same simple loop:

1. You study short accounts from peers in other countries, gathered and distilled into clear summaries.
2. You think about your own community.
3. You write down what you could do differently.
4. You exchange feedback with a colleague.
5. You leave with a plan you can act on this month.

You are asked to invite one colleague before you start.

A plan tested by a peer is stronger than a plan made alone.

This is the part that matters most.

Ordinary training hands you knowledge and leaves you to bridge the gap to action on your own.

Here you study what colleagues have actually done, beside the best technical guidance, so you learn from peers who have already crossed that gap.

Your own next step becomes shorter and surer.

The courses come in two kinds.

A peer learning course is built from real experiences and helps you turn them into your own plan.

A primer is faster and lighter, and brings many people together around one shared problem.

Both put your experience at the centre.

What you earn

You earn a recognized certification, not just a record of attendance.

When you complete a course, your certification documents what you now know and can do, at a high level, demonstrated through the plan and the work you produced.

This is a credential of value, not only for you but also for employers, partners, and funders.

It aligns with professional development frameworks for public health, environmental science, and animal science, so you can present it to your employer or your professional body and have it count for your career.

How it helps you, whatever your role

These courses were built by and for the people closest to the impacts, and they also serve the people whose decisions shape conditions on the ground.

• If you treat patients, the programme values the work you already do, connects you to peers who have solved your problem, and sends you back with a plan and a network.

• If you make policy or plan services, it shows you what is happening at community level, what is blocking action, and what local solutions already work.

• If you do research, it opens a large body of practitioner experience you can study and cite.

If you fund or partner, taking a course shows you the method from the inside, and your organization can join through the REACH network of more than 4,000 local organizations.

How the courses fit a complete path to results

A course is one step on a path that runs from the challenge you face to the results you want to see.

You can take a single course on its own.

You can also use it as the entry to the whole path.

You can join now and again whenever you need it.

1. A primer mobilizes a large group quickly around one shared problem, and helps you name what you are dealing with. You figure out what is your challenge – and what you can do about it.
2. A peer learning course takes you deeper. You study the experiences of colleagues from all over the world. Then, you consider how this can help you with the challenges that you face. That is where you begin turning shared experience into your own plan of action.
3. A peer learning exercise gives you sixteen focused days to find the root causes of your challenge and develop one real project. Peers give you feedback. You help them too. You grow as a leader. You help others grow. And a simple idea can blossom into a real-world project that can changes minds and save lives.

Turn your ideas into action: the Impact Accelerator

A course helps you make a plan.

Once you complete at least one course, you will receive an invitation to join The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator.

This is the part that training leaves out.

You finish a course full of ideas, then a new flood hits, medicines are in short supply, the same road that washes away, and the plan stays on paper.

The Accelerator is built to stop that from happening.

Its whole focus is action.

It stays with you while you take real steps in your own work, and keeps you moving until they produce results.

You do not wait for the perfect conditions or the complete plan.

You take one concrete step you can actually finish, then another, then another.

Each step teaches you something that makes the next one better.

Progress comes from doing, reflecting, and doing again, on the real challenge in front of you.

What this gives you:

1. You act now, on your own challenge, instead of waiting. Small, real steps add up to the larger change your community needs.
2. You are not left alone after the course. The Accelerator runs alongside you as you implement, so momentum does not die when the course ends.
3. You work with peers facing the same kind of challenge. When someone’s attempt fails, you learn what to avoid. When someone finds a way through, you adapt it for your setting.
4. Expert guides are there when you need them, to help you think a problem through, without taking over. You stay in charge of your own work.
5. You build confidence as you go. Many participants say they knew what to do but felt stuck on how to start, and acting one step at a time turned that into visible progress.

When you are facing the health impacts of climate change, this is how a plan becomes action, and action becomes results your community can feel.

Teach to Reach is your platform to meet, network, and learn

The Certificate peer learning programme for leadership in climate change and health is not just about taking courses.

You become part of a global community.

Request your invitation to join Teach to Reach now.

Teach to Reach is where that community meets, networks, and learns together.

You can join Teach to Reach at any time.

It is a platform, a community, and a network where you bring the challenge you are facing and get help from peers who have faced it too.

You can also help others with theirs.

Colleagues from your country and from all over the world take part.

Together these give you a path from the problem in front of you, to a tested plan, to action, to real change for your community.

Joining the programme also opens the door to what the Foundation offers with its partners, described below.

A map for your growth as a leader

We have build the first Competency Framework for Local Leadership, drawn from ten years of listening to more than 80,000 health and humanitarian workers.

This is a tool to help you chart your career – and figure out the best next steps to accelerate your growth as a leader.

Local leadership is a practice, not a job title.

It is what lets a nurse or a community health worker solve a hard problem, find scarce resources, and build trust at home.

Growth moves through three steps.

1. The practitioner solves the problem in front of them.
2. The collaborator adapts to local conditions and shares solutions with peers.
3. The strategist changes the system, mentors others, and mobilizes resources.

The programme moves you along this path.

Reflecting and trading feedback is collaborator practice.

Use the three steps as your own private checklist for where to go next.

For organizations: the REACH network

If you lead an organization, there is a further opportunity beyond your own enrolment. Your organization can join the REACH network, a coalition of more than 4,000 locally led health organizations and over 60,000 health workers across more than 70 countries, all leading climate and health action in their own settings.

REACH is built for organizational leaders, and the benefits are for your whole organization, not only for you.

1. Your staff and volunteers gain access to the Certificate programme, including early access and, in some cases, access reserved for partners.
2. You receive the insights we gather, so what the network learns becomes knowledge your organization can use.
3. We can help you track and support your own staff and volunteers as they learn and act.
4. We can build a programme tailored to your organization and the challenges your community faces.

You also help shape the programme itself, so it keeps meeting the needs of organizations like yours. This is how a single enrolment can grow into capability across your whole team.

Languages, and what you can access through partners

Every course is free.

The first three are available now in English and French.

The children’s health course is in English.

Spanish and Portuguese editions are on the way, so more workers will soon be able to learn and contribute in their own language.

If you work in Spanish or Portuguese, you can begin now in English or French and watch for the new editions.

Joining the programme also gives you access to opportunities the Foundation offers with its partners.

Through a three-year agreement with the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University, the largest academic network for climate and health education, you can connect expert-led science with what you and your peers know from practice.

Through an agreement with the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, the work is being adapted across the Americas, which is the route through which the Spanish and Portuguese editions are coming.

More opportunities open as the network grows.