At the intersection of health and the climate is an urgent crisis. This crisis affects health in ways that are wide-ranging, unevenly distributed, and difficult to isolate. It poses deep challenges not only for service delivery but for how we define value, whose preferences we measure, and how we account for intergenerational and regional equity.
The role of health economics in climate action
One of the strengths of health economics is its ability to make explicit the benefits of different actions – benefits that often remain hidden in climate policy debates. We believe health economics has much to contribute in articulating the true value of climate action and mitigation – not only in terms of avoided illness and mortality, but in promoting wellbeing, resilience, and intergenerational equity.
By connecting climate policy with health outcomes, and evaluating those outcomes using robust methods, we can help ensure that health (global and intertemporal) is not an afterthought in climate strategy, but a driver.
Doing so also enables us to make better decisions about investments in adaptation, green infrastructure, and low-carbon transitions – decisions that carry health consequences, whether intended or not.
OHE’s Work on Climate and Health
We are exploring the impacts of climate and health across several fronts:
- Valuing the health co-benefits of climate mitigation
One of our central projects is ECO-CHICA, conducted in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Shouro Dasgupta, from the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change.
ECO-CHICA brings together insights from environmental and health economics to develop more appropriate methods for evaluating climate action – especially in how we value the health co-benefits of mitigation and adaptation strategies. A core feature of the project is engaging with diverse stakeholders and strands of the literature to reflect perspectives across sectors, geographies, and disciplines.
We’re also working on how environmental impacts can be incorporated into health technology assessments (HTAs), including through work on carbon-minimal medical devices and the environmental footprint of health interventions. Across all this work there is a central concern: how to measure what matters, and for whom.
This brings us to a critical point. Environmental economics has made important progress in modelling and quantifying the effects of climate change and mitigation policies, often focusing on mortality, direct economic losses, or condition-specific impacts. Yet the broader consequences for quality of life—particularly across different regions and generations – remain insufficiently unexplored.
As health economists, we are equipped with tools to evaluate health-related quality of life, societal preferences, and trade-offs. But the question of whose preferences count—by age, by geography, by socioeconomic group – is fundamental to how we approach valuation in the climate context.
We’re concerned not just with improving methods, but with making sure those methods reflect the diversity of values that matter for fair and sustainable policy.
- Evaluating sector impacts of decarbonisation and green HTA
Health economics has an important role to play in shaping how the healthcare market rewards investment in decarbonisation.
OHE research has focused on the high-priority activities that the NHS, UK government and industry should undertake to tackle the challenge of reducing the NHS’s carbon footprint.
We concluded that to adopt the recommendations, investment is needed from the industry, the UK Government and the NHS. No one actor can be expected to foot the bill for the upfront and ongoing investment needed to achieve long-term sustainability within the pharmaceutical industry. Any action taken in the UK will need to be replicated internationally to have any impact. Meaningful engagement, collaboration and action need to be taken now by governments, health systems, medicines regulators and companies globally to secure the era of green pharmaceuticals.
Our economists have also led sessions at key health economics conferences on whether environmental impact should be embedded into health technology assessments (HTA).
We presented findings from OHE research into the contributions of healthcare to national carbon footprints across 13 countries, with estimates in 2015 ranging from 2.3% in Italy to 10.7% in Russia, and the US sitting at 6.7%. Moreover, in the UK, it is estimated that the manufacture, supply, and use of pharmaceuticals represent around a quarter of the NHS’s total carbon footprint. Clearly, for countries and health systems to achieve ambitious Net Zero targets, changes across the pharmaceutical industry will be critical.
- Convening expert voices in climate and health
OHE has hosted an array of events and webinars that bring together leading experts from healthcare, academia and government to discuss the pressing impacts of the health-climate crisis.
Our 2024 Innovation Policy Prize asked participants to consider how economic policies can incentivise environmentally sustainable innovation in the life sciences sector.
The winners were Professor Andrew Briggs, for a proposal that advocated for a three-pronged policy approach to align economic incentives for the life-sciences industry to reduce their environmental impact from the earliest stages of product development; and Professor Thomas Pogge whose proposal called for “greenovations” that continue to enhance human progress, whilst reducing the impact on the environment. His proposal focused on the Ecological Impact Fund (EIF) as one freestanding component of this, with the purpose of increasing uptake and incentivizing development of locally appropriate greenovations in lower-income countries.
We’ve also brought together experts across disciplines to identify the most pressing challenges and gaps in our understanding of the climate-health crisis. The panel discussed the challenge of addressing climate change’s impact on healthcare while reducing the sector’s own environmental footprint. They focused on key barriers including overlooked mental health effects, the lack of individual agency and resource constraints among healthcare workers, and the need for comprehensive data linking healthcare practices with environmental and health outcomes.
Most recently, in July 2025, OHE hosted a webinar on Valuing Health in an Era of Climate Crisis: Informing Policy Through Economic Evidence. This formed part of the organisation’s wider efforts to push this conversation further. The webinar was chaired by Mireia Jofre-Bonet, Chief Research Officer at OHE.
Speakers included Professor Rhiannon Tudor Edwards (Bangor University), Professor Rachel Morton (University of Sydney), and Professor Andrew Briggs (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine & University of Melbourne).
The aim of the webinar was to add an economic lens to the conversation at the intersection of climate and health. Professor Edwards made the case for a transdisciplinary approach that addresses the structural drivers of health inequities in the context of environmental change. Professor Morton’s presentation shared how life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used alongside economic evaluation to capture the full carbon footprint of healthcare technologies, improving the sustainability of clinical and funding decisions. Professor Briggs’ presentation addressed methodological challenges and opportunities for aligning the tools of health and environmental economics – towards more coherent and policy-relevant assessments.
Closing Thoughts
These focus-areas reflect a growing recognition that climate action is health action, and that valuing health in this era requires us to rethink what counts, how we measure it, and who gets to decide.