Climate and Health: 2024 Year in Review

From Day One of this Administration, President Biden and Vice President Harris have recognized the climate crisis as a crucial public health priority. This recognition stems from the major, current, and demonstrated risks of events such as heat waves, as well as the large, well-documented co-benefits of reducing emissions, such as improved air quality. The Biden-Harris Administration has advanced progress in the area of climate and health in a robust, ambitious, coordinated fashion. The following accomplishments from this past year showcase how this Administration has uplifted the health co-benefits of ambitious climate action. This Administration has driven the health care industry in sustainable directions, protected public health and health care delivery from climate impacts, and improved the state of science and technology to address this massive challenge.

In August 2024, over 100 participants-among them, government officials, environmental justice advocates, public health practitioners, museum directors, professors, nursing advocates, and medical doctors-gathered at the White House for a White House Climate and Health Forum. For those who attended this first White House convening on this theme in nearly a decade, the occasion was not only a celebration of great progress and a recommitment to go further, but also a benchmark moment for climate and health action.

The White House Climate and Health Forum occurred alongside two landmark, first-of-their-kind White House summits: a White House Summit on Environmental Justice in Action and a White House Summit on Extreme Heat. Taken together, these meetings contextualized climate and health amid the broader cause of environmental justice, embodied in the Biden-Harris Administration's Justice40 Initiative. The meetings drove urgent, lifesaving work to prepare for deadly climate impacts such as heat waves. The convenings also uplifted key public-private partnerships related to climate and heath, amplified a new environmental justice research plan, and raised awareness about key federal resources for communities to take action against heat risks.

The Biden-Harris Administration also took action to embed climate and health into government policies and practices. The White House released a landmark U.S. Framework for Climate Resilience and Security, including preparing for the impacts on health systems and health outcomes. At the August Forum on Climate and Health, leaders of the National Integrated Heat-Health Information System announced the release of the country's inaugural National Heat Strategy. In November, the Environmental Protection Agency released the first Interim Framework for Advancing Consideration of Cumulative Impacts to apply this concept-which jointly evaluates exposures to chemical pollutants, climate change, and other environmental stressors-to its work around the country.

Advancing climate and health science to equip health systems and save lives

Convenings and strategies are vital, but they must be paired with action to equip scientists, policymakers, and practitioners with the tools they need to do their jobs. In late May, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a new Heat-Health Index, which incorporates historical temperature, heat-related illness, and community characteristics data at the zip code level to identify areas at greatest risk and help communities prepare. Meanwhile, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) worked to expand the scale of its successful work on climate-based early warning for mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, amid a worsening burden of the disease across Africa.

Within the scientific community, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) named 13 distinguished Climate and Health Scholars, who will each spend a year embedded within one of the NIH institutes to advance linkages between biomedical research and climate science. This program builds on two previous cohorts, bringing the total number of participating experts to 28.

Finally, the Belmont Forum-a consortium including the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NIH, the Department of the Interior, the Department of State, USAID, and international partners-concluded its second Collaborative Research Action on Climate, Environment, and Health. In December, the Forum announced 11 new, cutting-edge research projects recommended for funding. These projects advance transdisciplinary work on all six inhabited continents. The work will address diverse climate-related challenges, such as heat, air pollution, food security, mosquito-borne diseases, and social determinants of health.


Moving from science to implementation

Scientific knowledge serves a strong social purpose when it is linked to policy implementation. At COP29 in November in Baku, Azerbaijan, HHS delivered an ambitious set of commitments outlining its work to advance climate action, including pledges from nearly 1,000 hospitals to reduce emissions and advance climate resilience goals through the White House-HHS Health Sector Climate Pledge. HHS also announced a vital set of actions to reduce heat and wildfire smoke related health risks among outdoor workers. The Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration also proposed a new standard that would protect approximately 36 million workers from heat-related hazards for the first time ever.

Beginning this summer, HHS released case studies on how the U.S. health sector is advancing climate action. The studies emphasize the novel application of funding and programs through the Inflation Reduction Act-which provided new funding streams to safety net health care providers-to advance health sector sustainability and resilience.

Meanwhile, USAID took on leadership advance health commitments made via President Biden's landmark President's Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), the most ambitious commitment to global adaptation in U.S. history. Key steps included establishing a first-ever climate framework for the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative and by convening a global extreme heat summit, which kicked off a "global sprint" for action to protect communities and workers from extreme heat. In November, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a new set of private sector commitments under PREPARE's "Call to Action," including the first by a biomedical company.


Global and multilateral leadership

Addressing the health aspects of climate change requires global attention from a vast, diverse set of actors. The Biden-Harris Administration provided global leadership through an array of multilateral organizations throughout 2024.

In May, the World Health Assembly adopted its first climate and health resolution in 15 years, paving the way for ambitious action by the World Health Organization (WHO) and global health sector to address the climate crisis. This resolution complements the WHO's flagship Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health, which the United States has participated in since its inception in 2021.

At the same time, as part of the G7, health ministers reaffirmed their longstanding commitment to address climate and health, including through the scale-up of funding available through multisectoral channels. Meanwhile, G7 leaders committed to advancing climate-resilient, equitable, low-carbon, and sustainable health systems, building on the first-ever "Health Day" at COP28 in Dubai.

Additionally, under the G20, as part of the Biden-Harris Administration's legacy of leadership, health ministers issued an entire declaration on climate and health. The declaration included extensive commitments to promote early warning for timely action, equip health workers with the tools they need, mitigate carbon emissions from the health care sector, and spur diverse streams of finance to meet these goals.

The United States has been a longstanding funder of both the Green Climate Fund and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. These bodies took action to advance climate and health in 2024. For example, the Global Fund reported that 71 percent of its investments from 2024-2026 would be going to the 50 most climate vulnerable countries in the world. Meanwhile, the Green Climate Fund outlined key its key steps to bridge the climate-health gap and issued grants to support climate action in Malawi and the Cook Islands. These efforts stand alongside the ambitious global commitments made by the World Bank and other multilateral development banks to advance climate and health action-including through a pathbreaking roadmap released in June 2024.

Collectively, these actions represent follow through on the Biden-Harris Administration's historic climate and health legacy. Under the leadership of President Biden and Vice President Harris, the U.S. government has delivered sustained action, innovative programming, and novel approaches to address the many facets of climate and health.

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