New Zealand's Health National Adaptation Plan (HNAP)
Categories: Action Line 2: Evidence-based policy strategy and capacity building, Health equity and climate justice, Assessments of climate and health risks and GHG emissions, Climate-related emergency preparedness and management, Climate-smart workforce, Climate-transformative leadership and governance, Health and climate research, Integrated risks, monitoring, early warning, and GHG emissions tracking, Management of environmental determinants of health, Health systems wide resilience
Country: New Zealand
Organizations: Ministry of Health, New Zealand
The intervention
In October 2024, the Ministry of Health released New Zealand’s Health National Adaptation Plan (HNAP) 2024–2027. Developed in response to the country’s first National Adaptation Plan (NAP) for climate change, the HNAP aims to to ensure the health system can provide climate-resilient health services, while also addressing the broader direct and indirect/cascading effects of climate change on the health of communities, including those effects that sectors outside the health system contribute to. The HNAP includes 26 actions across five broad focus areas: leadership and governance, social and environmental determinants of health, knowledge and risk assessment, health care service resilience and adaptation, and community and whānau leadership.
Success factors
Cross-agency collaboration and community engagement have been central to the HNAP’s development and early success. The Ministry of Health worked closely with Health New Zealand and a broad range of partners, including local government, Māori organisations, academia, and other non-government agencies. Five workshops were held to gather feedback, including one specifically focused on engaging with Māori (the Indigenous people of New Zealand). Equity is a guiding principle of the HNAP, and the Ministry of Health emphasised the importance of partnering with priority populations - such as young people, rangatahi, children and future generations, Māori, Pacific peoples, disabled people, rural populations and people living with high levels of socioeconomic deprivation - to co-design and identify climate and health actions - an approach that will continue throughout implementation.
Recommendations
New Zealand’s experience developing and implementing its HNAP underscores the value of collaboration over siloed approaches and the need to keep equity at the core of climate and health planning. The HNAP provides a framework to align and synthesise health sector activities, programmes, and research related to climate change. It also enables the identification of gaps, the setting of measurable goals, and the prioritisation of interventions that deliver co-benefits for health, equity, and resilience. Ongoing stakeholder engagement, transparent review processes, and shared accountability are critical to sustaining progress and driving meaningful, system-wide adaptation.
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