Welcome to the Belém Health Action Library!
This living library showcases diverse and cross-cutting actions that health systems around the world are taking to adapt, build resilience, and protect communities in the face of climate change. It highlights real-world examples of innovation and impact - showcasing what works, what’s been learned, and how others can follow suit.
This collection was developed to complement the Belém Health Action Plan and the COP30 Special Report on Health and Climate Change. Cases featured in this library are tagged according to the exposures they address, how they relate to the Belém Health Action Plan, and their alignment with components of the WHO Operational framework for building climate-resilient and low-carbon health systems.
Have an intervention to share? Submit your initiative to atach@who.int - and contribute to the growing global evidence driving climate-resilient health systems.
This library was curated by the NUS Centre for Sustainable Medicine in collaboration with the World Health Organization, the Ministry of Health of Brazil and ATACH.
Integrating climate change and planetary health into medical education in Australia and New Zealand
Medical educators across Australia and New Zealand developed learning resources about the human health impacts of climate change across five broad areas of learning.
Project Heatsafe
Project Heatsafe is an intervention study conducted by the Human Potential Translational Research Programme at Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. Researchers designed a scalable, sustainable and economically viable heat adaptation intervention package to protect outdoor construction workers.
Building early warning capacity for climate-sensitive diseases in Zunyi
Zunyi City in China created a multi-sectoral, cross-departmental early warning system used to enhance rapid response, community outreach and localised prevention to protect health during floods, heatwaves and seasonal epidemics. This capacity-building endeavor reaches across departments to integrate and coordinate response across platforms and ultimately strengthen resilience to climate-sensitive infections.
Developing a city-level heat health action plan in Tianjin, China
The city of Tianjin in China developed a heat action plan that links meteorological and hospital data to predict disease outbreaks across the city. The plan works at multiple levels bringing together insights from community grids, family doctors, traditional Chinese medicine institutions, and more to provide targeted support for vulnerable populations.
Urban heat islands and health in Australia
This collaborative data integration project brought together health datasets, heatwave impacts, and projected climate scenarios to help identify high-risk areas in Australia and inform adaptation policies. The involvement of diverse stakeholders across sectors, the use of open data, and the grounding of this work in the scientific literature helped this initative to yield practical, evidence-based recommendations for adaptive action.
Building health literacy for climate change adaptation in Thailand
Health literacy on climate change is of key importance in Thailand's HNAP. Three central actions guide their strategy: individual capacity to self-protect, sector-level capacity building, and health literacy evaluations. These actions complement one another, allowing for a multi-level and informed approach to augmenting climate and health literacy.
Strengthening heat preparedness in Thailand
Thailand's government developed the Heat-Health Warning System and Action Plan that reaches across departmental offices responsible for health, meteorology, environment, and more. This plan disseminates heat advisories across diverse media channels to promote responsive, early and evidence-based protection against heat-related health impacts nationwide.
Local, multisectoral coordination Dengue in Rio
Rio de Janeiro developed the Dengue Emergency Operations Center (COE Dengue) to unite experts across fields to develop a coordinated surveillance and response strategy to the rising threat that dengue poses to the city. Centralised oversight improved the efficiency of decision-making, while the combination of climate data with public health surveillance ampllified the city's capacity for proactive, scalable dengue control.
Bangladesh: Early action protocol for heat events
Bangladesh's Early Action Protocol was designed to protect health amidst increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves resulting from climate change. The protocol prompted the implementation of cooling centres, medical care, psychosocial support, and safe drinking water for thousands of people. Its proactive, forecast-based approach ultimately helped reduce climate-related health impacts across Dhaka.
Bangalore's AI dengue monitoring platform
In Bangalore, India, dengue season overlaps with monsoon season, sparking an increasing need for integrated data and informed response strategies. This led to an AI-driven Dengue Platform that provides risk classification forecasts up to four weeks in advance to allow for effective preparation and coordinated, timely response.