In order to better understand the emerging initiatives and barriers tackling the impacts of climate change on health, the Global Climate and Health Summit’s Innovation Thinktank will allow individuals to share their ideas and developing projects to a panel of experts. This provides an opportunity to discuss global perspectives on the current challenges, as well as interdisciplinary collaboration for potential solutions.
Hear from a selection of participants in our Innovation Thinktank, who are advancing solutions to mitigate and adapt to the health threats of climate change—across the Summit’s key focus areas: Heat, Air Pollution, and Nutrition.
In the articles that follow, three participants highlight their innovative responses to the threat of climate change and the need for bold, meaningful action. This is our ambition for The Global Climate and Health Summit: to spark tangible, lasting change for people and the planet. Keep an eye out for future posts to hear from more of our participants.
Heat Resilience
Applying machine learning to predict hospitalisations linked to extreme heat events in Senegal
Mory Toure
Agence Nationale de l’Aviation Civile et de la Météorologie (ANACIM) and Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique (ESP), Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Senegal
By integrating hospital records and climate data, the study identifies heat waves using temperature and heat index thresholds. It applies models such as GAM, Random Forest, and XGBoost. Results reveal that hospitalizations tend to increase 3–5 days after a heatwave, especially among vulnerable populations. This approach supports the development of early warning systems and informs public health preparedness in heat-prone regions.
Air Pollution and Indoor Air Quality
Improving the health and well-being of people with disabilities (PWDs) in Ghana’s rural savannah
Simon Kwabena Dankyi
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana
This innovative initiative aims to improve the health and well-being of people with disabilities (PWDs) in Ghana’s rural savannah by replacing traditional biomass stoves with solar cookers. Targeting 1,000 households—500 in the treatment group and 500 in the control group—the project aims to evaluate the intervention’s effectiveness in reducing CO₂ emissions, physical strain, and indoor air pollution, with a focus on respiratory health outcomes.
Key components include the distribution of solar cookers, training on their use, and ongoing monitoring of adoption rates, health impacts, and behavioural shifts. To ensure sustainability, the project will actively collaborate with local disability organisations, solar energy providers, government agencies, and international partners.
The project will promote the local production of accessible solar cookers, offering economic empowerment opportunities for PWDs and supporting broader scalability. The findings will contribute to public policy, advance scientific understanding, and champion inclusive, climate-resilient cooking solutions for low-resource rural communities.
Sustainable Nutrition
Prioritising sustainability in food-based dietary guidelines
Ana-Catarina Pinho-Gomes
University College London, UK
There is a pressing need to update the food-based dietary guidelines in the UK to consider sustainability. The current Eat Well guide doesn’t take into account the carbon footprint of the food system. This project proposes that we write a viewpoint/position statement that we can use to lobby OHID to review the Eat Well guide vis-à-vis the contribution of the food system to climate change. It would be important to frame this from the perspective of health co-benefits, as sustainable diets are also healthier.
This may seem a not very ambitious proposal, but considering the cost-of-living crisis and the need for incremental changes, it may be feasible and have a material impact if paired with other policies that make a healthy and sustainable diet affordable to everyone. This proposal would hopefully reduce the impact on climate change of the UK food system whilst simultaneously improving the healthiness of the diet. Successful implementation could be measured by the National Diet and Nutrition Survey and food statistics.