Global Health Solutions in the Context of Climate Change

There is no longer any debate that malaria is climate-sensitive. One effect of a warming planet, changing rainfall patterns, and unpredictable extreme weather events is to complicate malaria elimination efforts… particularly throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease already kills a child every 2 minutes.

Forecasting Healthy Futures (FHF) is a growing coalition of global health, technology, and public sector partners coming together to bring greater attention to the inequities at the intersection of global health and climate change among policy makers and thought leaders across sectors and to promote proactive, resilient solutions that use integrated data and artificial intelligence to anticipate and mitigate the worst health effects of a warming planet.

FHF's Institute for Malaria and Climate Solutions (IMACS)

The Institute for Malaria and Climate Solutions (IMACS) is a virtual center of excellence established to advance the discipline of weather-informed malaria prediction and planning and to support its integration in malaria control programs worldwide.

  • Supporting ongoing innovation with tools like FHF's Malaria Prediction and Planning Tool (MPPT), which integrates hyperlocal weather and earth observation data with other critical sources of health and demographic information, and generates simple dashboards that guide users through decisions in supply chain, staffing, and the timing and targeting of major malaria interventions.

  • Encouraging shared learning and best practices through a network of researchers and practitioners of climate-informed malaria planning tools and early warning systems, a global Science Advisory Board, and an annual Scientific Conference.

  • Providing on-the-ground technical assistance to help malaria control programs around the world integrate weather data and other information, anticipate the effects of climate change on malaria transmission, and use artificial intelligence to predict and mitigate its impact on the health of their population.

PARTNERS AND COLLABORATORS

Lending their support and expertise, Forecasting Healthy Futures partners and collaborators combine their distinctive health, data, policy and weather expertise—and build on proven strategies to test and scale this innovative model.

  • Under its Reaching the Last Mile Global Health Initiative, the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court is supporting Forecasting Healthy Futures with seed funding and technical expertise from across its networks.

  • Malaria No More, PATH and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) will provide health expertise and programmatic and policy guidance to countries, policymakers and other initiative partners.

  • The Tableau Foundation is providing software licenses, training, and technical expertise to boost data analytics and visualization capabilities.

  • IBM’s The Weather Company provides data sets on weather conditions related to mosquito activity and proliferation, as well as analytical support.

BACKGROUND

The world has made enormous progress addressing the threat of mosquito-borne diseases. The global campaign to end malaria, for example, is one of the great public health successes of our time: Since 2000, 7 million lives have been saved and more than 1 billion cases have been prevented.

Yet despite the tremendous progress, mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria, dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, and Zika, remain a major global health challenge that disproportionately affects the world’s most marginalized populations. These diseases are also climate-sensitive: changing weather patterns are introducing new challenges in efforts to effectively prevent, control, and eliminate them. For example, cyclones or heavy rains can increase the risk, timing, location, and severity of disease, and prevent access to life-saving health interventions.

One effect of a warming planet, changed rainfall patterns, and unpredictable extreme weather events is to worsen malaria, particularly throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease already kills a child every 2 minutes and children under 5 and pregnant women are most vulnerable.

As extreme weather events become more commonplace, there is increased urgency to anticipate and accelerate progress against mosquito-borne diseases and to mitigate their impact on those most at-risk.

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