Project News

The project organized a side meeting of the Prince Mahidol Award Conference (PMAC) 2023, which title was "Scale-up the health professional development to protect health from climate change" in a hybrid format. The side meeting was hosted by the project (Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), National Health Security Office (NHSO), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)), and the National Health Professional Education Foundation (NHPE).

Climate change is one of the biggest health threats in the 21st century, that causes climate-related disasters, such as heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, extreme rainfall, flooding, sea-level rise, etc. These climate-related disasters lead to climate-sensitive health risks, e.g., zoonoses, food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, injury, heat-related illness, respiratory illness, mental health issues, etc. Though many countries have made a great effort to the realization of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as one of the targets of Sustainable Development Goals, the climate crisis could threaten the achievement of UHC by way of damaging existing healthcare infrastructure, hampering access to healthcare services, etc.

Health workforce is a core part of the healthcare system and serves for the delivery of healthcare services. Health workforce needs to deal with health harms caused by climate change and climate-related disasters. However, according to "2021 WHO HEALTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE GLOBAL SURVEY REPORT", only 40% of countries reported training in climate change and health has been conducted in the last two years. Therefore, health professional development needs to be evolved and scaled up in a way of developing capacity for climate change and health.

The objectives of the side meeting were; To review the impact of climate change on health and the current situation of health professional development in the context of climate change and health; To share the experience and good practices that enabled healthcare workers to prepare for health risks of population and/or system caused by climate change.

The side meeting consisted of 3 sessions. In session 1, titled "WHO strategy on climate change, health and health workforce", Dr. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum from WHO HQ and Dr. Masahiro Zakoji from WPRO, WHO, gave presentations that covered the situation and strategy of climate change, health and health workforce.

In session 2, under the title of "Good practice to prepare health workforce for climate change",

three speakers, namely Dr. Renzo R. Guinto from St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine, Philippines, Mr. Shuichi Ikeda from JICA Project for Strengthening the ASEAN Regional Capacity on Disaster Health Management, Thailand, and Dr. Payoungsak Kittikul from Chevron USA, California, USA, talked about their good practice in their field to respond with climate change.

In session 3, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Prasobsri Ungthavorn, who was the chair of the side meeting and NHSO board member, moderated the panel discussion, which theme was "Moving forward to scale-up the health professional development". Mr. Nontakorn Siriwattanasatorn, from the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations Thailand, joined the panel discussion with the speakers in sessions 1 and 2 as a panelist. The panelists and participants of the side meeting had an active discussion on the essentials, challenges, and prospects of how to prepare the health workforce for climate change and health and deepened their understanding.

The project would be pleased if the side meeting could help to promote countermeasures against climate change in public health.

We would like to thank all the participants, panelists and organizers for joining and supporting this side meeting. We also would like to express our sincere gratitude to the PMAC secretariat for providing us with the opportunity to connect with people from all over the world.