A global coalition of cities, healthcare companies and researchers released a report showing how climate action can save 725,000 lives a year and cut healthcare costs by $70 billion.
Rising chronic disease, aging populations, inflated care costs and health inequities are pushing health systems to the brink, the report warned. This is compounded by climate change, with urban heat mortality projected to rise 45% by 2030. But practical, city-led interventions can ease pressure on health systems while delivering major health and climate benefits.
“Reimagining healthcare means keeping people healthier for longer, looking beyond hospitals and clinics and tackling the broader factors that affect people’s health,” the report said. “Cities can be a key driving force to lead this change.” Seven in 10 people globally will live in cities by 2050.
The report is the result of a two-year partnership between the Sustainable Markets Initiative Health Systems Taskforce and the Resilient Cities Network, a global city-led nonprofit focused on urban resilience. They are supported by the Yale School of Public Health, the climate risk consulting firm Mode Economics and Sanofi. The Sustainable Markets Initiative task force is itself a public-private partnership launched at COP26 made up of healthcare companies, the World Health Organization and key public sector partners.
They plan to develop health assessment tools tailored to individual cities, decision-making tools on the economic case for adopting interventions and a playbook to drive implementation—including archetypal partnership and financing models. A total of 29 cities across 19 countries are participating, with California's Berkeley and Florida’s Broward County among them.
The report suggests that local, low-cost measures can have a meaningful impact on outcomes. The modeling showed that four bundles of city-led interventions could save 725,000 lives a year, cut $70 billion in healthcare costs and avoid more than the annual emissions of Prague when applied to 11,000 cities globally.
Meaningful interventions include simple heat and air quality adjustments, like urban greening and cool roofs, as well as point-of-use water filtration devices. Water infrastructure upgrades are another promising solution, as is everyday healthy lifestyle promotion through urban design and social prescribing. Early warning systems and awareness campaigns are also notable community resilience measures.
"Good health starts long before medical care is needed, in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the cities we live in,” Iñaki Ereño, CEO of Bupa, a British payvider participating in the initiative, said in a press release. “At Bupa, we believe the answer lies in prevention: strengthening the environments, systems and models that sustain health.”
The report comes at a time when the U.S.—the second-largest emissions emitter in the world—undertakes a sweeping rollback of regulations that protect the environment under President Donald Trump. During his second month in office, Trump shuttered the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS') Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, established in 2021 by President Joe Biden to spur the health sector into reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.
Healthcare workers have increasingly sounded the alarm about the dangers of climate change to individual and population health. A range of U.S. hospitals have made public commitments to address their climate footprint, including a pledge that was previously run by the HHS under Biden.
Though hospitals are more likely to take steps to prepare for a climate event if they are based in a well-known climate risk zone, all organizations should be taking steps to prepare, experts previously told Fierce Healthcare.
“The thing that makes me really worried is that everywhere is now Florida,” Emmie Mediate, chief program officer of Health Care Without Harm, said. “The reality is that everywhere is now vulnerable.”