The four key themes from the Global Climate and Health Summit

The Summit workshops recommended areas for action which, following the Summit, were reviewed and consolidated alongside key gaps, risks and opportunities raised by speakers, panel discussions and audience questions across the Summit.

From this analysis, the Physiological Society identified four themes for post-Summit action. They span the human, technical and governance dimensions of climate and health: from empowering people with knowledge, to scaling proven interventions, enforcing accountability through evidence and setting safe boundaries for adaptation based on physiological realities.

Engaging People: Strengthening climate physiological health literacy and communications

 

The Summit highlighted gaps in communication, education and public awareness as one of the most prevalent challenges within our current climate and health systems. Summit participants also frequently raised the need for greater integration of climate change into health and physiology curricula (within schools, universities and healthcare education) and vice versa to strengthen interdisciplinary learning and reduce knowledge siloes.

 

Strengthening education and communication provides the opportunity to address the current disconnect between climate change responses and physiology. Physiological science helps ensure that climate strategies are people centred, evidence-based and designed to deliver measurable health benefits while reducing emissions. To ensure physiology is part of effective solutions, physiological science needs to be further embedded into climate-health literacy and communications.

 

Discussions across the Summit acknowledged that there needs to be considered and targeted co-creation with communities, in order to ensure that channels of communication are meaningful, engaging and effective.

Without embedding physiology into climate–health literacy and communications, the gap between science and action will persist. Policies will remain fragmented, communities will lack the knowledge to protect themselves, and harmful or ineffective responses will multiply. The longer this gap endures, the greater the damage to health, equity, and trust in institutions. In contrast, access to trusted, evidence-based information empowers individuals, drives behaviour change and creates political pressure for decision-makers to act ambitiously.

Potential actions, highlighted by Summit participants, to be further explored in consultation and Roadmap development:

  • Embed climate and physiological health literacy into curricula (within schools, universities, healthcare education).
  • Training programmes for healthcare professionals on climate change risk.
  • Digital engagement tools tackling misinformation.
  • Use of public/media ambassadors and trusted voices from other sectors.
  • Local community engagement programmes.

Scaling Action: Driving system change through targeted investment and innovation in physiology based health–climate solutions

 

The Summit showed that many solutions for challenges across climate and health already exist, often in localised contexts. Interventions highlighted included clean cooking technologies to reduce household air pollution in low-and-middle income countries, plant-based meal programmes improving nutrition while reducing emissions and urban greening to cool cities while supporting mental and cardiovascular health. Often these interventions were pilots or solutions that exist in one setting or location that could be adopted elsewhere but often are not, due to limited or unsustainable funding and knowledge gaps.

 

The significant challenge raised throughout Summit discussions was the ability for these interventions to be adopted across different regions, settings and scales, particularly without appropriate investment, procurement reform and innovation pipelines. It was clear from the Summit that upscaling and capitalising on existing innovations is key for driving efficient and practical solutions.

If effective physiology-based health-climate solutions cannot secure investment, or are confined to pilots or specific contexts, they will fail to reach the communities most in need and efforts will be duplicated. Without efforts to effectively scale solutions by considering both investment and targeted interventions, there will be continued reliance on fragmented or one-off initiatives rather than evidence-based, scalable strategies, leaving health inequities and climate risks unaddressed.

Potential actions, highlighted by Summit participants, to be further explored in consultation and Roadmap development:

  • Collaborate with researchers and users to understand the tools, methods and finance required to build and scale physiological innovation.
  • Demonstrate the connection between climate and physiological health risk, economic cost and the cost of inaction.
  • Use evidence to illustrate the health cobenefits of tackling climate change in order to articulate the clear return on investment and cost saving opportunities from both adaptation and mitigation.
  • Establish evidence translation mechanisms to better translate evidence and connect research to policy and identify target innovation areas within climate and health.

Delivering Accountability: Turning physiological evidence into legal drivers for climate accountability and enforcement

 

Participants in the Summit highlighted the lack of accountability across systems as a significant challenge and risk for our current climate and health systems.

 

Physiology demonstrates the tangible effects to the human body caused by climate change. The Summit encouraged links between physiological evidence and climate litigation: investigating the accountability for measurable harms such as lung function decline, consequences of heat stress, and impaired child growth. Workshops emphasised building alliances between scientists and lawyers to hold governments and corporations accountable, using physiology to bridge science and justice.

If physiological evidence is not embedded into legal frameworks, accountability for climate related harms will remain weak and fragmented. As a result, governments and corporations may avoid responsibility, leaving vulnerable communities to absorb the worsening health impacts of climate change without protection or recourse. This failure shifts the burden of managing risk onto individuals, while systemic drivers of harm remain unchecked.

Potential actions, highlighted by Summit participants, to be further explored in consultation and Roadmap development:

  • Establish stronger relationships between learned societies, including the Physiological Society and relevant legal groups.
  • Consider admissibility standards for physiological evidence.
  • Connect lawyers with robust and useable physiological data.

Defining Boundaries: Embedding physiological evidence into policy, planning, and finance to protect people and guide realistic adaptation

 

The Summit underscored that physiology provides essential evidence for identifying the points at which climate stress begins to impact people and when survival becomes unlikely. Understanding these boundaries gives policymakers a framework for designing effective adaptation solutions, prioritising protection for the most vulnerable and making clear the limits to adaptation that demand urgent climate mitigation.

 

Despite progress, physiological data and insights remain underused in planning and regulation. Health risk models, adaptation plans and safety standards often rely on environmental metrics that fail to capture how human bodies are affected. This gap means that interventions may be misdirected, poorly timed, or insufficiently protective.

 

Climate adaptation and mitigation must be guided by what human physiology can withstand. To achieve this, physiological evidence must be embedded into regulation, standards and finance: from workplace safety and building design to climate risk assessment and adaptation planning. Shared definitions, comparable data and agreed actions to avoid crossing thresholds will make climate policy more human-centred, prevent avoidable deaths, and direct investment to where it has the greatest protective effect.

 

A stronger understanding of how thresholds and limits differ between groups (by age, occupation, sex, health status, or socio economic context) is essential for targeting interventions effectively. These physiological differences should inform where and for whom adaptation efforts are prioritised, ensuring that resources protect those most at risk rather than those easiest to reach.

 

Summit participants stressed the need for standards and tools that explicitly incorporate physiological data into adaptation planning and emergency preparedness. Examples of this include workplace safety regulations, housing and ventilation standards, or urban design and cooling initiatives. They also highlighted the importance of addressing the combined and compounding effects of multiple stressors – such as heat, air pollution and poor nutrition – which, when layered with social inequality, amplify harm and deepen health disparities. Physiology helps explain how these stressors interact inside the body, identifying the pathways through which exposure translates into health problems or loss of function. Embedding this evidence into adaptation planning and public health policy will be critical to target protection where risks overlap and to design joined-up responses that strengthen resilience rather than tackling each risk in isolation.

If physiological evidence that underpin thresholds and limits continue to be overlooked and underutilised in areas such as planning and regulation, decisions will lack clear and consistent boundaries. Accountability will weaken, protection will remain fragmented, and the burden of managing risk will increasingly fall on individuals rather than institutions.

Potential actions, highlighted by Summit participants, to be further explored in consultation and Roadmap development:

  • Develop agreed definitions and metrics for physiological thresholds and limits across key climate–health domains (heat, air pollution, nutrition, hydration).
  • Review opportunities for improved and consistent monitoring, data sharing and standard-setting.
  • Integrate physiological variability into risk modelling and adaptation planning at community, workplace and national levels.
  • Improve public communication and preparedness measures ahead of extreme weather events such as heatwaves or pollution spikes.
  • Support open repositories of physiological climate–health data to enable integrated cross-sector planning.
  • Work with standards bodies (e.g. ISO, ISSB, SASB) to further embed physiologically informed health and environmental indicators in corporate and regulatory frameworks.
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