The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is pleased to announce that Dr Marina Romanello will join Teach to Reach 19 to present the latest findings from the Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change.
Did you miss it? Catch up on our YouTube channel.
You already know something has changed.
The rains come late, then fall too hard.
The road to the health centre turns to mud.
Children arrive with diarrhoea after the flood, and with empty stomachs after the drought.
You see that climate change is harming the community you serve.
Ibrahim Lawan, a public health professional in Plateau State, Nigeria, watched it happen in his own health centre:
“Heavy rainfall lasted for several days, causing the rivers to overflow and flood nearby villages. The flooding led to an outbreak of water-borne diseases, particularly cholera and diarrhea. Many people, especially children and the elderly, got sick. The health center reported over 500 cases of cholera and diarrhea within a week. As a healthcare worker, I saw firsthand the impact of the flooding on people’s health. […] In retrospect, I believe that this event was directly related to climate change, as the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like flooding are increasing globally.”
In retrospect. Like Ibrahim, many health workers connect the dots later, on their own.
At Teach to Reach, you can connect them together, in dialogue with the scientist who leads the world’s annual assessment of how climate change is harming human health.
Meet the scientists who track climate change and health
This edition of the Lancet Countdown publishes new evidence from 146 authors and 71 contributing organisations from around the world.
Every year, they track how climate change is harming people’s health: how many people die from heat, how much income workers lose when it is too hot to work, how drought and floods affect food and disease, and whether health systems are getting ready.
They publish what they find in The Lancet, a leading medical journal read by doctors and decision makers worldwide.
Dr Marina Romanello leads the Lancet Countdown.
She is joining Teach to Reach.
First, she will listen to you.
Then, she will share the Lancet’s new findings with you.
Her evidence and your knowledge answer different questions
Dr Romanello’s team brings the best quantitative evidence the world has on the health impacts of climate change: numbers on deaths, disease, hunger, and lost income, for every country, year after year.
These numbers show that what you see is part of something much larger.
But no global dataset can know what you know.
It cannot tell why, in your district or facility, a mother missed her antenatal visit, which medicine ran out first after the flood, which patients your team reached by boat, or what your community tried that worked.
You know these things because you are there every day.
The two kinds of knowledge need each other.
The numbers show the size and direction of the harm.
Your experience shows what that harm means for real people, and what can be done about it.
When Marina Romanello Romanello first joined Teach to Reach in December 2024, she said so herself:
“The biggest validation of the numbers that we show has to do with the experiences on the ground.”
Read about that first dialogue: The scientist who listens: what the Lancet Countdown heard from health workers
That is why this session works the way it does.
Health workers speak first.
The scientist presents.
Then we meet, network, and learn, as people who each hold part of the answer. See what we learned in the first dialogue…
The exchange runs both ways.
A health worker in South Africa described trying to protect an elderly relative during a heatwave:
“During recent heat waves trying to ensure an elderly relative is not exposed to the excess heat, her carer does not like using air conditioners because of misconception that it is bad for your chest. A lack of information on the specific vulnerability of the elderly was a barrier and understanding why keeping the elderly cool is important. risk communication tools would have been useful to allow me to better explain how the climate change will continue to cause very hot days and that this needs to be addressed”
At Teach to Reach, you bring what you see.
Marina Romanello brings what the world’s evidence shows.
You leave with the big picture to make sense of what you are seeing where you work.
What happens at Teach to Reach
- You speak first. People who work for health share how climate change is harming their communities, and what they are doing about it.
- Marina Romanello shares the new findings, in plain terms.
- Together, we connect the dots. Which findings match what you see? What do they miss? What should you prepare before the next season?
What you take home
- Words and evidence for your next conversation with your patients, your community, your manager, or your district team.
- Ideas you can use, from health workers who face the same floods, the same heat, and the same empty shelves.
- A plan for the next emergency. You will get access to the 7-30 Climate-Health Emergency Framework, built from your colleagues’ experiences, to help you be ready within 7 days of a warning and get services back on their feet within 30 days.
- Recognition. Share one experience and you become a Guest of Honour. You can also earn an Official Letter that certifies your learning.
Take part in four steps
- Request your invitation to join Teach to Reach. Learn more about Teach to Reach…
- Answer Teach to Reach Questions to share your experience before the event. You will receive the Teach to Reach questions by email. Answer the ones where you have something to tell:
- This year, what change in the weather or the seasons hurt the health of the people you serve? What happened, and where?
- What did you or your community do about it? How did you know whether it worked?
- If you could ask Dr Romanello one question, what would it be, and why does the answer matter to your work?
- Join the live event. Bring your question.
- Bring three colleagues. Share this page with the people you work with.
Poor connectivity? Listen later on the Teach to Reach podcast.
What the numbers still cannot count
Some harm never shows up in a global dataset.
In 2024, Dr Romanello said so herself: “We cannot quantify much of what you’re experiencing on the ground,” because “global data sources are not available.”
Mental health, she said at the time, is one of the biggest gaps.
Health workers see it every day.
A clinical health worker in Costa Rica remembered the children:
“Working with children and adolescents, I remember how their drawings showed sadness and worry about the heat and the absence of water since some time earlier there had been water rationing in their area. The drawings included containers where they collected water, and people suffering from heat and thirst. Very graphic images of that moment, because of the drought at the time.”
A health official in Argentina wrote ten days after a storm destroyed the city of Bahía Blanca:
“The city flooded, and in some places there is still water. It affected the whole population. I am worried about the effects on mental health, especially of children and older people. I do not know what actions the State has taken.”
And a clinician in Ethiopia described what usually happens after a disaster:
“I also know and have treated many internally displaced persons due to draught and landslides too. In all cases I know, what providers do is provide food, clothing, shelter and primary care for physical ailments. Mental health care is often neglected, or addressed inadequately.”
Your experience can fill these gaps.
That is why this conversation needs you in it.
Why global partners should be listening too
If you fund, plan, or research climate and health, this is one hour in which you can hear the global evidence and the people who live it, in the same conversation, days before COP31.
Health workers are already acting, often with no one behind them.
A health worker in South Africa saw floodwater wash rubbish into the dam where his community drew its drinking water, and came up with a plan to clean it:
“No one backed my idea except me, I spent weeks trying to convince them otherwise but they talked me out of it and I dropped it. […] If back then, I had support my community, financial support from local businesses and the belief in my idea, we would have pulled it off successfully.”
The 2025 Lancet Countdown noted that “scientific evidence generation is still concentrated in higher HDI countries rather than those most exposed to the health impacts of climate change.”
Teach to Reach health workers work in those countries every day.
In July 2023, 4,700 health workers from 68 low- and middle-income countries joined the first Teach to Reach event on climate and health.
In 2025, more than 6,400 health and humanitarian staff from Africa, Asia, and Latin America answered the Global Climate Change and Health Survey, about 61% of them through Teach to Reach.
We documented 100 local solutions from 19 countries in the Teach to Reach 11 insights report.
In 2025, the Lancet Countdown included testimonials from Teach to Reach health workers in its country profiles.
Read the full story in Lessons in resilience.
About Teach to Reach
Teach to Reach is a learning platform, a global network, and a community of people who work for health, run by The Geneva Learning Foundation since 2021.
Health workers share what they know from their daily work, learn from each other, and stay connected. 97% participants say they learn something new that they use in their work. Learn more about Teach to Reach.