Health at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2023:Climate change and health: Strengthening health systems to promote better health in Latin America and the Caribbean

The COVID‑19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of building the resilience and adaptability of health systems to cope with shocks and rapidly changing conditions. As countries slowly emerge out of this crisis, they are at an opportunity to strengthen their capacity to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate, which is expected to increasingly affect the health of the population in a number of ways. This chapter examines LAC countries current level of health systems resilience to climate change, identifying trends in the region and providing key considerations for policy actions that countries can implement to strengthen this resilience. The chapter is organised following the six building blocks of the World Health Organization Operational Framework for Building Climate Resilient Health Systems and uses them to explore LAC countries along several dimensions.