BACKGROUND:
Climate change is affecting people’s health. Climate resilient health systems have been defined by WHO (2023) as those that can “anticipate, respond to, cope with, recover from, and adapt to climate-related shocks and stresses, to bring sustained improvements in population health”. However, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says, “climate resilient development is a process of implementing greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation options to support sustainable development for all” - since adaptation actions have limitations in a warming planet. This session aims to discuss ten policy recommendations to leverage adaptation and mitigation policies to increase health system resilience to climate change.

METHODS:
The session will focus on policy recommendations for climate resilient health systems prioritized as per research published by Health Care Without Harm and the Asian Development Bank. Interactively, we will engage participants in a discussion of these policy recommendations, asking questions such as: how could this policy recommendation be implemented in your context? What are the barriers for this recommendation to work? What other policy recommendations might be missing?

RESULTS:
Participants will demonstrate knowledge of policies that improve climate resilience of health systems. This knowledge will allow them to advocate for climate adaptation and mitigation actions in their settings. Their feedback on what recommendations are missing will be shared to continuously improve or contextualize our research as we advocate with national governments and international bodies.

CONCLUSIONS:
Knowledge of policy recommendations and solutions is a first step in setting up a journey to policy change at different levels. For academia, this can include further research to contextualize what can be implemented in a specific regulatory environment. For policy makers, it will allow the development and implementation of financed policies to build resilient health systems.