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Technical Case Study

From: Agence Nationale de l'Aviation Civile et de la Météorologie (ANACIM), The Rockefeller Foundation, Global Nation

Approach:

  • Senegal is highly exposed to heatwaves and sustained high temperatures, with impacts ranging from heatstroke to worsening cardiovascular illnesses.  

  • Despite robust meteorological data and a recognizable need for heat early warnings, a lack of integration between the National Agency of Civil Aviation and Meteorology (ANACIM) and the Ministry of Health and Social Action (MSAS) hampered the implementation of this approach in Senegal.  

  • Recognizing this concern, ANACIM, national health services, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) came together to produce the first Heatwave Early Warning Bulletin in 2022.  

  • These Bulletins contain color-coded maps of heatwave-prone zones, information on specific health impacts, and accessible advice on prospective mitigation measures. 

  • Bulletins are disseminated across ministries, local authorities, and communities, to inform tailored, localized heatwave response actions.  

  • ANACIM and MSAS’s collaboration underscored the importance of synergy across state departments, drawing on a mutual understanding of climate services and their role in addressing health sector needs.  

Why take action?

Credit: ANACIM (2024)

Climate change has contributed to a fast rise in temperatures in the Sahel region of Africa. In Senegal this, combined with preexisting structural vulnerability, predisposes various communities to a range of co-occurring health concerns. Frequent heatwaves and rising average temperatures have impacts ranging from dizziness and dehydration to the worsening of cardiovascular illnesses. Across the country, heatwaves are defined as a maximum daily temperature exceeding the 95th percentile, or the heat index rising above 40°C, for 3 consecutive days. Heatwaves in May of 2013 resulted in a reported mortality of 12.5%, concentrated in highly vulnerable departments and amongst women (57%) versus men (43%)1.  

These concerns are especially acute amongst pregnant women, children, persons with disabilities and chronic conditions, and the elderly, as key vulnerable groups.  

In response to these concerns, the National Agency of Civil Aviation and Meteorology (ANACIM), in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and national health services, produced a Heatwave Early Warning Bulletin to disseminate information on heatwave risk, exposure, and mitigation. The Bulletin document, released weekly during seasons with high heat-stress (usually March to June), provides a one-to-three-week predictive forecast of heatwave risk in specific regions of the country. Health authorities capitalized on existing networks to send the bulletin to all districts and local organizations, who further amplified the information through their respective networks.  

Since its launch in 2022, the Bulletin has acted as a catalyst for the timely deployment of actions, both preventative and responsive, to safeguard the health of vulnerable groups. Overall, Senegal’s approach highlights the importance of a national political framework that is attentive to joint climate-health risks, and proactive in addressing them through a cross-sectoral approach.  

Key messages

The Bulletin has acted as a critical early warning signal for a variety of sectors and response partners, enabling timely, life-saving interventions by:  

  • Creating organized channels of communication between state-level meteorological services, health sector practitioners, and local leadership.  

  • Ensuring the budgeting and allocation of financial, human, and resource capital at both state and community levels.  

  • Improving health system preparedness, with medical staff able to plan for higher caseloads, locate and communicate with vulnerable groups, and provide tailored resources.  

  • Building awareness and educating community members on the health impacts of extreme heat, and on individual protective measures to adapt to this. 

How to get started

Recognizing these co-occurring threats to health, and the need for cross-sectoral collaboration, Senegal’s National Agency of Civil Aviation and Meteorology and Ministry of Health and Social Action (MSAS) took an integrated approach to national governance on extreme heat. An informational Bulletin was identified as one of the first steps in overcoming a traditionally siloed approach to urban governance on climate and health issues. The Bulletin was prepared, and continues to be sustained, through funding and technical support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with return on investment calculated as a function of health system preparedness (including patient flow, drug conservation, and early resource allocation).  

This collaborative effort resulted in the first Heatwave Early Warning Bulletin being published in 2022, which included a color-coded map of heatwave-prone zones in Senegal, the specific health impacts of heatwaves, and prospective mitigation measures. 

Key learning: Creating long-term channels between national agencies to foster an enabling political environment

Recognizing the need for crosstalk between national agencies, ANACIM organized a meeting with national health services and practitioners, facilitated by NOAA in 2016. This meeting, seen as the first formal engagement between Senegal's meteorological and health services, marked a turning point in the creation of a long-term enabling environment, allowing health practitioners to understand what climate data gets collected, how, and the value it holds for decision-making. Partnerships with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MoESD) and other national agencies further streamlined the heatwave response mechanism and ensured the timely allocation of state resources to priority groups. Through dialogue, there was a growing understanding of the complementary skillsets as well as needs, of Meteorological, Health and other services.

Key learning: Building capacity amongst practitioners across meteorology, health, and other sectors 

Far before the development of the Bulletin, NOAA had played a critical role in facilitating capacity building workshops with Senegalese stakeholders. NOAA’s African desk, for example, invited both health and meteorological staff to trainings and workshops on the creation of pilot forecasts in 2019. These efforts laid strong foundations for an understanding of climate data across parties and created a robust data-to-action pipeline, useful in the creation of the Bulletin and subsequent response measures.

Key learning: Systematizing the approach by establishing Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs), focal persons, and project timelines 

To sustain momentum from these early meetings, ANACIM and the MSAS established respective focal persons to act as points of contact. An intention of work, set out between 2019 and 2020, intensified the collaboration between the two service areas, with both climate and health practitioners participating in NOAA’s International Desks program to acquire forecasting training and produce a bulletin on climate and health. Bureaucracy between departments was overcome by assigning specific, dynamic points of contact across agencies.

Key learning: Co-creating, refining, and engaging with multiple stakeholder groups to ensure buy-in and scale 

A year after its production, the Bulletin was shared with a cross-functional group of experts from environmental groups and the University of Dakar for feedback and refinement. Further, diverse stakeholder groups were involved at all stages of the Bulletin’s development, including inviting stakeholders to provide comments and feedback, obtaining administrative approval from the MSAS, leveraging expertise from vulnerability assessment specialists, and modelling the collaboration after a successful past partnership between meteorological services and the agriculture sector. An inclusive and participatory ethos ensured that the Bulletin wasn’t just a static informational resource, but a catalyst for subsequent adaptation actions at the ground-level.

Tracking progress

As part of an intention to further expand the Bulletin’s reach at the community level, surveys at pilot sites were used to find out how stakeholders on the ground received information. In a pilot in the Fatick region, for example, Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers surveyed 600 community members to understand the behavioral changes that occurred in response to the Bulletin. Multiple vulnerable groups – from heat-exposed shepherds to football teams and school students – reported positive behavioral changes in response to early warnings.  

Various channels of communication – from radio to door-to-door interactions – were tested as part of a concerted effort to understand the most productive engagement strategy. Feedback from farmers, for example, led to adaptations to the Bulletin such as using voice recordings for those who could not read text messages. 

Over the course of the Bulletin’s development, input from government officials and leading academics ensured that best practices in meteorology, urban planning, and community engagement were followed. The initiative also sparked broader interest in integrating climate and health into other sectors. A pilot with the Department of Education, for example, led to the Bulletin being used to inform school closures and adjust timetables to mitigate heat impacts on students.  

Today, the use of the Bulletin continues to be monitored and evaluated by a network of national Red Cross volunteers, who assess the penetration of this information into the countryside and across the country

In practice

The Heatwave Early Warning Bulletin, released weekly over peak heatwave months (March to June), has had substantial impact on the delivery of public health services in Senegal. As the uptake of the Bulletin increased over time, health practitioners became increasingly aware of the benefits of climate information, and demand for the Bulletin spread across districts. The Bulletin acted as an early warning signal, enabling timely interventions across sectors and response partners like the National Red Cross Society. Health authorities capitalized on existing networks to send the Bulletin to all districts and to local organizations, who further amplified the information through their respective networks.  

Today, the Bulletin is disseminated to District Chiefs across the country through a vast public health network reliant on ANACIM’s webpage, community radio and Red Cross volunteers.  

The expansion of the Bulletin has encouraged the Senegalese government to create frameworks for joint efforts on other environmental issues. ANACIM and MSAS’s collaboration underscored the importance of synergy across state departments, drawing on a mutual understanding of climate services and their role in addressing health sector needs. ANACIM’s efforts at fostering national dialogue and creating channels for departmental crosstalk were recognized at the African Public Service Optimum Awards (APSOA) earlier this year, gaining them the title of the Best National Meteorological Agency in Africa. 

Key resources

More information

For more information, please contact the Health Team at The Rockefeller Foundation via HealthTeam@rockfound.org  

References

  • Heat waves and health risks in the northern part of Senegal: analysing the distribution of temperature-related diseases and associated risk factors (Sy et al., 2022) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35763140/ 
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