climate change
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Colonization, climate change, and indigenous health: from Algiers to Acre
I sat in a conference hall in Rio Branco, Acre State, Brazil. My mind was in a sanatorium of Algiers, Algeria. This was where my mother was sent as a girl. They told her she got tuberculosis because she was an “indigène musulman”. In 1938, the year of my mother’s birth and after over a…
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WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action
After the World Health Assembly’s adoption of ambitious global plan of action for climate and health, global and country stakeholders are meeting in Brasilia for the Global Conference on Climate and Health, ahead of COP30. Three critical observations emerged that illuminate why conventional global health approaches may be structurally inadequate for the challenges resulting from…
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You are not alone: Health workers are sharing how they protected their communities when extreme weather hit
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…
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Anecdote or lived experience: reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems
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…
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Experiences shared at Teach to Reach 10
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…
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World Health Summit: to rebuild trust in global health, invest in health workers as community leaders
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…
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Klepac and colleagues‘ scoping review of climate change, malaria and neglected tropical diseases: what about the epistemic significance of health worker knowledge?
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…
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Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action
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…
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Climate change and health: perspectives from developing countries
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…
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Making the invisible visible: storytelling the health impacts of climate change
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…
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