Climate services for health readiness evaluation toolkit

The health community is increasingly concerned with the health impacts of changing climate patterns. To guarantee adequate healthcare services for populations now and in the future, health bodies worldwide need to be able to make informed decisions to anticipate, prepare for, and mitigate climate-related risks to health. Accurate, accessible and interpretable climate information is the cornerstone of these decision processes. Climate services for health package and present climate information in a way that health professionals and systems can easily understand and integrate into their processes.

This ReadinessToolkit has been developed to support countries in identifying needs for tailored climate services, and to evaluate the feasibility of development. It does so by guiding countries through a process of understanding their current enabling environment, capacities, and data, evidence and information availability. It is a seven-step additive process to be followed at the national level, with support from external experts. Its main six outputs are:

1. An overview of existing policies in place to support the development of climate services
2. An overview of existing capacities in place to support the development of climate services
3. A summary of evidence of current climate risks and an inventory of existing climate and health data and information
4. The identification of priority of climate information needs
5. Definition of potential services to meet these needs
6. A detailed feasibility evaluation of climate services