Is Awareness Enough? Prioritising Health in City Climate Action Planning
Recent research from the Bennett Institute highlights that health integration in city climate action planning rarely steps beyond awareness.
Climate change is a leading determinant of health. Every year people lose their lives in heatwaves and floods, face new disease risks and disruptions in care, and get separated from their support systems, homes, and livelihoods in the aftermath of climate shocks. Over the last five years, more emphasis has been dedicated to integrating human health risk into climate discussions. However, there remain limits to meaningful integration in policy and practice.
Bennett Institute researchers Devin O’Donnell and Benjamin Sovacool examined how health is currently being integrated into city level policy. Only six cities of 55 cities had meaningful health integration while dominant health strategies rarely fall outside of already mainstream categories such as heat action, air quality, and disaster risk management.
This research exposes the limits to how health is currently being integrated and argues for stronger and more diverse health adaptation strategies. This includes better defining what adaptation strategies are health strategies; ensuring actions are implementable (specific, achievable, and effective); and centering equity in health integration.
This is article is a summary of the research paper:
O’Donnell, D., Sovacool, B.K. Cities need an integrated and holistic approach to health adaptation in climate planning. Nature Cities 3(1) (January, 2026), pp. 38–47. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00364-1
