Climate change, migration and health systems resilience: Need for interdisciplinary research

Abstract

Climate change is one of today's major challenges, and among the causes of population movement and international migration. Climate migrants impact health systems and how their ability to respond and adapt to their needs and patterns.  To date, the resilience of health systems in the context of climate change has barely been explored. The purpose of this article is to show the importance of studying the relationship between climate change, migration, and the resilience of health systems from an interdisciplinary perspective. Resilience is an old concept, notably in the field of psychology, and is increasingly applied to the study of health systems. Yet, no research has analysed the resilience of health systems in the context of climate change. While universal health coverage is a major international goal, little research to date focused on the existing links between climate, migration, health systems and resilience. We propose an interdisciplinary approach relying on the concept of health system resilience to study adaptive and transformative strategies to articulate climate change, migration and health systems.