Extreme weather events or climate shocks cause physical injury and psychological trauma by increasing exposure to infectious diseases and malnutrition. These events disrupt food systems, the availability of safe water and hygiene practices. Demand for health and nutrition services can surge precisely when the functioning of a health system may itself have been disrupted. Health systems must be responsive to the needs of the population in an increasingly unstable and changing climate.

The Health System Resilience to Climate-Related Surges (HERCS) project aims to address this gap by examining how resilience capacity can be monitored and forecasted to facilitate anticipatory action to surges in northwestern Kenya. Using a combination of participatory action and artificial intelligence, the research will investigate and improve resilience of health systems and community management of acute malnutrition. The project will develop and test gender-sensitive participatory methods to assess resilience capacities in formal and community health systems. It will then develop and test a machine-learning approach to forecast climate-related demand surges in health system demand. Finally, the project will suggest surge-related resilience strengthening actions to benefit up to 339,000 people.

This project is part of the Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) initiative, a UK-Canada framework research program aiming to enable socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience to climate change and natural hazards in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.