Standards for official statistics on climate-health interaction
Categories: Action Line 1: Surveillance and monitoring, Assessments of climate and health risks and GHG emissions, Health and climate research, Air quality, Floods, Food and water insecurity, Health systems wide resilience, Heat and cold, Vector distribution and ecology, Wildfires
Organizations: United Kingdom, Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Country: Ghana, Rwanda and United Kingdom
The intervention
The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) in collaboration with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) Rwanda and Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) at the University of Ghana is developing a globally generalisable statistical framework – Standards for Official Statistics on Climate-Health Interaction (SOSCHI). Funded by Wellcome, the project aims to create a globally generalisable statistical framework that enables countries to measure and monitor the health impacts of climate change. SOSCHI also includes the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), and the Cochrane Planetary Health Thematic Group as project partners. The aim is to support adaptation to national and local contexts, strengthens statistical capacity, and informs evidence-based policymaking. The team also works with the UN Global Platform to facilitate global access to tools and methodologies.
Success factors
The following factors in the design and implementation of the SOSCHI project have contributed to the successes in developing a globally generalisable statistical framework:
- Collaboration with project partners to apply a range of expertise and ensure relevance to different national contexts
- Engagement with a wide variety of leading scientific experts to develop the SOSCHI framework
- Pilot implementation in partner countries, supported through engagement with relevant stakeholders (e.g. policy users and data providers)
- Global engagement, specifically with the UN Statistical Division and the WHO ATACH network to ensure SOSCHI framework alignment with existing frameworks.
Recommendations
Implementation of SOSCHI indicators should align with each country’s national priorities and data capacities, using the suite of open-access tools developed under the framework. These include Climate and Health topic documents providing indicator definitions and methodological guidance, indicator calculator tools on the Climate and Health Platform for automated data processing, and an open-source R package available on GitHub for flexible local adaptation. Lastly, effective implementation requires coordination across government departments and the establishment of data-sharing agreements to integrate meteorological and health data, ensuring comprehensive analysis and evidence-based decision-making on climate-health interactions.
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