Climate change is expected to threaten the health and livelihoods of up to 4.8 billion people by 2030 (UN, 2025), making it one of the most significant systemic risks to human development and economic stability. Demand for healthcare services is projected to rise substantially, both directly through more frequent and severe climate hazards and indirectly through pressure on critical systems such as food, water, energy, and air quality. At the same time, health systems remain highly vulnerable to climate shocks, leading to disruptions in services and access.
Despite these growing risks, the current level of health adaptation remains critically low. Firstly, financial support for health adaptation accounts for less than 0.5 percent of total multilateral climate finance (IPCC, 2022). This level of investment is insufficient to protect populations and health systems, and funding often does not reach the most climate vulnerable settings. Secondly, existing frameworks for climate resilient health systems are fragmented and largely focused on individual facilities, often overlooking broader system dependencies such as energy, water, transport, and digital infrastructure. As a result, they fail to capture the full range of vulnerabilities and may underestimate risks and appropriate adaptation measures.
This Adaptation Insights report addresses how health systems can be made climate resilient to sustain value chains, healthcare services, and access to care. It introduces two complementary conceptual frameworks that provide a systematic basis for identifying disruptions and guiding adaptation. Together, they examine resilience from two perspectives: maintaining healthcare service provision, including facilities and assets, and ensuring sustained access to healthcare for patients, populations, and vulnerable groups, ultimately leading to actionable adaptation strategies.

See also
See also the related GCA report “Healthcare System-of-Systems Vulnerability”. It presents healthcare as a complex system of systems—a network of interdependent components including water, energy, waste, digital and transport services, all susceptible to climate-related hazards. This interconnectedness makes health infrastructure especially vulnerable to climate change, as disruptions in one area can trigger cascading effects across the entire system. By mapping these interdependencies, this report identifies targeted adaptation strategies to prevent such chain reactions and ensure the continuous delivery of healthcare services.

Core references
Ridde, V., Barua, M., Bonnet, E., Casseus, A., Clech, L., De Allegri, M., Kabir, S., Goudet, J.-M., Henrys, D., Islam, M. N., L’Heureux, Y., Masselot, C., Mathon, D., Meister, S., & Sarker, M. (2025). Improving an integrative framework of health system resilience and climate change: Lessons from Bangladesh and Haiti. PLOS Climate, 4(6), e0000512. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000512
Thacker, S., Massie-Vereker, V., Adshead, D., Mercer, E., & Leppert, G. (2026). Healthcare System-of-Systems Vulnerability. Global Center on Adaptation (GCA); Oxford Infrastructure Analytics (OIA). https://gca.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GCA-2026_Healthcare-System-of-Systems-Vulnerability.pdf

References
IPCC (with Pörtner, H.-O., Roberts, D. C., Adams, H., Adler, C., Aldunce, P., Ali, E., Begum, R. A., Betts, R., Kerr, R. B., & Biesbroek, R.). (2022). Climate change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. IPCC Geneva, Switzerland: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/
UN. (2025). The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025. United Nations. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2025/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2025.pdf