Scaling Up Health Adaptation Measures to Meet the Climate Change Challenge in the Americas

KEY COURSE INFORMATION

  • Eleven live biweekly sessions from 25 September 25 to 30 October, 2025
  • Case studies from across the America and opportunities to share your own work
  • Course delivered in English and Spanish, with materials and live interpretation in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese. 
  • Participants who attend 7 out of 11 sessions and score above a 70% on the final exam will receive a certificate of completion

NOTE: It is mandatory to join the Zoom classes and take the final exam on the set date under the same email address.

 

Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to the health sector. Across all roles and contexts, teams are tasked with responding to novel, intensified, and cascading climate impacts urgently and effectively while also investing in low-carbon, resilient operations. While many know that reactive and incremental adaptation will not be sufficient to avoid severe health impacts, particularly in low-resourced and remote settings, existing pressures on staff and services in many jurisdictions make it difficult to move beyond pilot projects and piecemeal solutions. However, as increasingly destructive wildfire and hurricane seasons have demonstrated: adaptation action itself is insufficient if it is not rapidly scaled-up from local to national levels through deep coordination involving key decision makers within and outside of the health sector. 

Hosted by the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (GCCHE), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), EarthMedic and EarthNurse Foundation for Planetary Health, and Health Canada, this bi-weekly 11-session course is designed to equip health professionals, federal, regional and local health systems planners, hospital administrators, emergency planners, sustainability officers, public health officials, and others with the knowledge and tools needed to rapidly scale-up adaptation, mitigation, and resilience efforts to prepare health systems for climate change. This will include discussions and engagement on:

  • developing priority actions to protect health and health systems in a more severe climate regime;
  • examining how to use existing climate change and health guidance to rapidly advance actions, best practices for promoting health equity and inclusion; and
  • identifying key partnerships for making progress in efforts to protect health and scaling-up efforts to build climate resilience in tandem with implementing measures towards low carbon health systems.

Additionally, this course includes special content on internaional adaptation policy and global governance frameworks to prepare participants attending the COP30 and/or engaging in discussions regarding the Global Goal on Adaptation in November. 

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:   

  1. Understand the importance of rapidly scaling up climate change and health adaptation actions to prepare individuals, communities and health systems for more severe impacts expected with climate change. 
  2. Describe key actions for scaling-up health adaptation within their jurisdiction that support health and well-being and that can help communities prepare for more severe climate hazards
  3. Identify opportunities for increasing health adaptation efforts that support health and equity and increase climate resilience
  4. Be prepared to work with a broader range of partners to address current barriers to health adaptation in their jurisdiction and take advantage of opportunities to scale-up efforts. 

Course Structure

The course will consist of twice weekly live-virtual sessions (90 minutes each), offered in English and Spanish (live translation will be provided). Each session will consist of 50 minutes of “theory/foundation” followed by 1-2 case studies, representing instances across the Americas. There will be a live question and answer which will be monitored by the program team and questions will be consolidated and addressed to expert lecturers. Resources such as frameworks and suggested readings will be provided to all course participants.  Video recordings will be available following each session for asynchronous view.

Download the session descriptions here

Register for the course here

Audience

All professionals interested in climate and health adaptation are welcome! 

The expected audience includes health systems planners, hospital administrators, health facility board members, long-term care/community care professionals, business continuity officers, emergency planners, sustainability officers, public health and primary health care officials, health practitioners, and paramedics.

Prerequisites

While all health professionals are welcome to enroll in this course, it is suggested that participants have some foundational knowledge of climate and health. For individuals who do not have prior knowledge (previous courses or training) on the topic, it is recommended to review the following links, where you will find courses that will provide the necessary elements to better benefit from this course.

  1. Climate and Health Responder Course for Health Professionals
  2. Climate and Health Responder Course for Latin America

Course languages 

The course will be delivered with interpretation into Spanish and English, and presentations will also be available in French and Portuguese.

Community of Practice Participation

Active participation by participants in the course is encouraged. During registration, individuals can select to contribute case studies from their organizations/jurisdictions to present during the course and/or have them submitted to the Alliance for Action on Climate Change and Health (ATACH) Case Studies Series. 

CERTIFICATE REQUIREMENTS

Participants who attend at least 7 of the 11 sessions live and pass the final exam with a score of >70% at the end of the course will be awarded a Certificate of Participation from the GCCHE.

Will close 5 November 2025 at 11:00 (Panama). The format of the final exam will consist of a combination of multiple-choice and true/false questions. Participants should be prepared to take the exam in one sitting, as the system will not save answers if the exam is taken in multiple sessions over the period the link remains open. Once you finish your exam, you will find the Course Evaluation Survey.

Download the session descriptions here

Register for the course here