HISP network to support 7 African countries with DHIS2 Climate & Health tools
Through the Global Fund Climate x Health Catalytic Fund, HISP UiO and local HISP groups will help countries strengthen national information systems for climate-informed health programming and disease surveillance.
In early 2025, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria–in partnership with the Gates Foundation and Foundation S–announced a new Climate x Health Catalytic Fund. The aim of this fund is to enable vulnerable countries to better address the health effects of climate change through design and implementation of country-owned and locally led solutions, foster resilient health systems, and promote the adoption of low-carbon, sustainable health care technologies.
To support low- and middle-income countries in achieving these goals, the Global Fund has identified several key areas of technical assistance that partner groups with relevant expertise can provide through this catalytic fund. The HISP network, which is made up of 23 local HISP groups in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas, and coordinated by the HISP Centre at the University of Oslo (HISP UiO), has been officially selected by the Global Fund as a partner in this initiative.
In the initial phase of our collaboration through the Climate x Health Catalytic Fund, HISP groups and HISP UiO will provide technical assistance on climate and health data integration and climate informed disease surveillance to seven African countries: Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Ghana, and the DRC. The local HISP groups supporting this work includes HISP West & Central Africa, HISP Nigeria, HISP Ghana, HISP DRC, and Saudigitus (HISP Mozambique).
The scope of this collaboration will include a capacity and needs assessment, stakeholder consultations, design and deployment of data tools, capacity building, and sustainability planning. This work will leverage digital solutions developed through the larger DHIS2 Climate & Health project, including the DHIS2 Climate App, to integrate climate data into these countries’ existing national Health Management Information Systems (HMIS) to support climate-informed health policy-making, planning and healthcare delivery.
The HISP network has also been selected by the Global Fund as a technical assistance provider for climate-informed disease surveillance. The goal of this initiative is to integrate climate and other environmental data into existing systems to augment their early warning and response capacity for climate-sensitive diseases. This area of work will draw on the DHIS2 Chap Modeling Platform, developed by HISP UiO as a predictive modeling tool that can be applied to a variety of disease forecasting and early warning use cases.
The HISP network is one of several partners that will provide technical assistance to countries through the Climate x Health Catalytic Fund. We will work closely with our country partners and coordinate with the other technical assistance providers involved in this initiative to eliminate redundancies and accelerate the achievement of country strategies for climate-resilient health systems.
