Southern Africa Consortium for Climate Change and Health (360G-Wellcome-336423_Z_25_Z)

Southern Africa faces increasingly severe extreme heat and precipitation events. The Centre aims to overcome the knowledge, policy and financial barriers that constrain progress with health adaptation and mitigation. Using a transdisciplinary and multisectoral approach, we address extreme heat in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and flooding in Malawi, with a focus on pregnant women, children, older people and those with chronic conditions. We adopt a policy-cycle framework to: quantify, track and cost climate-health impacts; test adaptation innovations, including anticipatory cash transfers, supports for mental health resilience and complex-cooling interventions; and drive step-changes in regional stakeholder coordination and policy influence. Quantifying health costs of Climate Change informs allocations of domestic financing, estimates of Loss and Damage, and strengthens arguments for mitigation. We support expansion of national climate and health programmes, through proactive policy influence and technical inputs into climate finance applications. We will develop novel-mitigation strategies based on traditional public health levers for controlling health-harming industries, including legal reforms. Throughout, we will include lived experience expertise, and prioritise diversity and inclusion. Together, our activities will catalyse the expansion of national programmes on Climate Change and health, and strengthen African leadership, both critical pathways to securing a liveable future.