Working Group on European responses – a social determinants of health approach

The World Health Summit – The Lancet Regional Health – Europe Commission on Health, Migration and Climate Change

The WHS – The Lancet Regional Health – Europe Commission on Health, Migration and Climate Change was launched in 2024 and is comprised of four working groups of regional experts from academia, UN, and civil society. It is co-chaired by Professor Stephen Matlin (Imperial College London) and Professor Luciano Saso (Sapienza University of Rome).

This Working Group, European responses – a social determinants of health approach, aims to gather evidence from the WHO European Region on policy and practical responses that consider the health of migrants subject to climate hazards. The Working Group is conducting a document review as well as a qualitative study targeting clinicians, NGOs, civil society, UN agencies and governments. The data will inform the Commission’s report – expected mid-2026.

We use the IOM definition of environmental migrants: “persons or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment that adversely affects their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad.” This includes any type of population movement in anticipation of or response to environmental changes including forced displacement (e.g., environmental changes that undermine people’s ability to live in their habitual residence), planned resettlement (e.g., to reduce risk of exposure to environmental changes), and immobility (e.g., people that wish to migrate but have limited capacity to do so). We acknowledge that migration scenarios often involve a range of sociological, economic, political and other factors, and understand environmental migration to be multicausal in which environmental drivers play a significant role.

Environmental change refers to disturbances in the environment related to natural ecological processes or human activity, including acute events and longer-term environmental changes that provoke humanitarian impacts and losses. For example: extreme weather events, such as storms (e.g., hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tornados), floods, droughts, heatwaves and wild/bushfires – or events triggered by them such as land/mudslides. Slower-onset human-mediated environmental changes such as desertification, sea level rise, and riverbank erosion are also encompassed by the term.

Co-chairs: Professor Bernadette Kumar and Professor Karl Blanchet

Contact: rosemary.james@unige.ch