Teach to Reach Health workers are sharing how they protected their communities when extreme weather hit

You are not alone: Health workers are sharing how they protected their communities when extreme weather hit

Global health

Today, The Geneva Learning Foundation launched a new set of “Teach to Reach Questions” focused on how health workers protect community health during extreme weather events. This initiative comes at a crucial time, as world leaders at COP29 discuss climate change’s mounting impacts on health. As climate change intensifies extreme weather events worldwide, health workers are often the first to respond when disasters strike their communities. Their experiences – whether facing floods, droughts, heatwaves, or storms – contain vital lessons that could help others prepare for and respond to similar challenges. Read the eyewitness report: From community to planet: Health professionals on the frontlines of climate change, Online. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660 Why ask health workers about floods, droughts, and heatwaves? “Traditional surveys often ask for general information or statistics,” explains Charlotte Mbuh of The Geneva Learning Foundation. “Teach to Reach Questions are different. We ask health workers to share …

Anecdote or lived experience reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems

Anecdote or lived experience: reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems

Global health

A health worker in rural Kenya notices that malaria cases are appearing earlier in the season than usual. A nurse in Bangladesh observes that certain neighborhoods are experiencing more heat-related illnesses despite similar temperatures. These observations often remain trapped in the realm of “anecdotal evidence.”  The dominant epistemological framework in public health traditionally dismisses such knowledge as unreliable, subjective, and of limited scientific value. This dismissal stems from a deeply-rooted global health paradigm that privileges quantitative data, randomized controlled trials, and statistical significance over the nuanced, contextual understanding that emerges from direct experience. The phrase “it’s just anecdotal” has become a subtle but powerful way of delegitimizing knowledge that does not conform to established scientific methodologies. Yet this epistemological stance creates a significant blind spot in our understanding of how climate change affects health at the community level. Climate change manifests in complex, locally specific ways that often elude traditional …

Teach to Reach 10 Experiences shared

Experiences shared at Teach to Reach 10

Global health

Before, during, and after Teach to Reach on 20-21 June 2024, 21,398 health workers across the Global South—from veteran national managers to newly-trained community health workers—shared their unfiltered, frontline experiences of delivering care in an increasingly complex world. Ahead of Teach to Reach 11, The Geneva Learning Foundation has just released the English-language collection of “Experiences shared“. A second collection of experiences shared by French-speaking participants is also available. This remarkable collection captures over 600 experiences that health workers shared, in their own words, offering rare, ground-level perspectives on how global health challenges manifest in communities. Themes and topics explored in this collection: Through questions that probe specific moments rather than seeking generalizations, these accounts detail personal encounters with everything from climate change’s effects on malaria transmission to the challenges of integrating immunization with other health services. Health workers share candid stories of their successes, failures, and innovations: using WhatsApp …

World Health Summit World Health Organization Investment Round Climate change and health

World Health Summit: to rebuild trust in global health, invest in health workers as community leaders

Global health

Discussions at the World Health Summit in Berlin this week have rightly emphasized the role of health workers, especially those directly serving local communities. Health workers stand at the intersection of climate change and community health. They are first-hand eyewitnesses and the first line of defense against the impacts of climate on health. There is real horror in the climate impacts on health they describe. Read the Health Worker Eyewitness reports “Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action“ and “On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report”. There is also real hope in the local solutions and strategies they are already implementing to help communities survive such impacts, most often without support from their government or from the global community. There is no alternative to the health workforce as the ones most likely to drive effective adaptation …

Petra Klepac Climate change, malaria and neglected tropical diseases-a scoping review

Klepac and colleagues‘ scoping review of climate change, malaria and neglected tropical diseases: what about the epistemic significance of health worker knowledge?

and Global health

By Luchuo E. Bain and Reda Sadki The scoping review by Klepac et al. provides a comprehensive overview of codified academic knowledge about the complex interplay between climate change and a wide range of infectious diseases, including malaria and 20 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The review synthesized findings from 511 papers published between 2010 and 2023, revealing that the vast majority of studies focused on malaria, dengue, chikungunya, and leishmaniasis, while other NTDs were relatively understudied. The geographical distribution of studies also varied, with malaria studies concentrated in Africa, Brazil, China, and India, and dengue and chikungunya studies more prevalent in Australia, China, India, Europe, and the USA. One of the most striking findings of the review is the potential for climate change to have profound and varied effects on the distribution and transmission of malaria and NTDs, with impacts likely to vary by disease, location, and time. However, the …

Climate change and health-Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action

Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action

Global health

As world leaders gathered for the COP28 climate conference, the Geneva Learning Foundation called for the insights of health workers on the frontlines of climate and health to be heard amidst the global dialogue. Ahead of Teach to Reach 10, a new eyewitness report analyses 219 new insights shared by 122 health professionals – primarily those working in local communities across Africa, Asia and Latin America – to two critical questions: How is climate change affecting the health of the communities you serve right now? And what actions must world leaders take to help you protect the people in your care? (Teach to Reach is a regular peer learning event. The tenth edition on 20-21 June 2024 is expected to gather over 20,000 community-based health workers to share experience of climate change impacts on health. Request your invitation here.) Their answers paint a picture of the accelerating health crisis unfolding in the world’s most climate-vulnerable …

Climate Change and Health Perspectives from Developing Countries

Climate change and health: perspectives from developing countries

Global health

Today, the Geneva Learning Foundation’s Charlotte Mbuh delivered a scientific presentation titled “On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report” at the University of Hamburg’s Online Expert Seminar on Climate Change and Health: Perspectives from Developing Countries. Mbuh shared insights from a report based on observations from frontline health workers on the impact of climate change on health in their communities. Investing in the health workforce is vital to tackle climate change: A new report shares insights from over 1,200 on the frontline Climate change is a threat to the health of the communities we serve: health workers speak out at COP28 The Geneva Learning Foundation, a Swiss non-profit, facilitated a special event “From community to planet: Health professionals on the frontlines of climate change” on 28 July 2023, engaging 4,700 health practitioners from 68 countries who shared 1,260 observations. “93% of respondents believed that …

Visual storytelling impacts of climate change on health

Making the invisible visible: storytelling the health impacts of climate change

Global health

On March 18, 2024, the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) hosted a workshop bringing together 553 health workers from 55 countries with TGLF’s First Fellow of Photography and award-winning photographer Chris de Bode. Watch the workshop in English and in French. Poor connectivity? Get the audio-only podcast. The dialogue focused on exploring the power of health workers who are there every day to communicate the impacts of climate change on the health of those they serve. Learn more… The Geneva Learning Foundation’s exploration of visual storytelling began, two years ago, with a simple yet powerful call to action for World Immunization Week: “Would you like to share a photo of your daily work, the work that you do every day?” Over 1,000 photos were shared within two weeks. “We repeated this in 2023, to show that it is people who make #VaccinesWork”, explains Charlotte Mbuh, the Foundation’s deputy director. Watch the 2022 …

Aerial view of a flooded urban residential area of Dera Allah yar city in Jaffarabad District, Baluchistan Province, Pakistan. Credit: Gavi/2022/Asad Zaidi

Ten eyewitness reports from the frontline of climate change and health

Global health

The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has created a platform enabling health workers to describe the impacts of climate change on their local communities. Here are ten of the most striking reports. Published on 30 November 2023 on the Gavi #VaccinesWork blog. Written by Ian Jones for Gavi. In July 2023, more than 1,200 health workers from 68 countries shared their experiences of changes in climate and health at a unique Geneva Learning Foundation event designed to shed light on the realities of climate impacts on the health of the communities they serve. A special TGLF report – On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report – includes a compendium and analysis of these 1,200 health workers’ observations and insights. Here are ten of the most striking. Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi, who works for the Ministry of Health in Abuja, Nigeria, has noticed big changes to the …

Health worker voices and agenda at COP28

Before, during, and after COP28: Climate crisis and health, through the eyes of health workers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America 

Events, Global health

Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi, a health professional from Nigeria: “Going back home to the community where I grew up as a child, I was shocked to see that most of the rivers we used to swim and fish in have all dried up, and those that are still there have become very shallow so that you can easily walk through a river you required a boat to cross in years past.” In July 2023, more than 1200 health workers from 68 countries shared their experiences of changes in climate and health, at a unique event designed to shed light on the realities of climate impacts on the health of the communities they serve. Before, during and after COP28, we are sharing health workers’ observations and insights. Follow The Geneva Learning Foundation to learn how climate change is affecting health in multiple ways: On 1 December 2023, TGLF will be publishing a …