28
Jan

As the pace of climate change accelerates, its effects on health are becoming increasingly evident, with vulnerable populations bearing the brunt of rising temperatures, pollution, and changing disease patterns. Addressing these challenges calls for a holistic "One Health" approach, which recognizes the interconnected health of people, animals, and ecosystems and the need for multidisciplinary collaboration to achieve optimal health outcomes on local, national, and global scales. Data systems are essential to this effort, offering insights into patterns, enabling early intervention, and supporting comprehensive responses. However, these systems often operate in silos and lack integration across sectors, limiting their ability to effectively address the complex realities of climate and health impacts.

The session is organised by Aapti Institute and Data2X. Aapti is a global tech policy research organisation, works at the intersection between technology and society to build solutions that enhance societal impact, justice, and equity. Aapti’s work has investigated emerging technologies, participative governance, data for innovation, data annotation and labour for AI, and human rights. Aapti Institute’s research has been at the forefront of work on new forms of data governance that help data work for everyone. Aapti Playbook on Fostering Participatory Data Stewardship launched in 2023 is a visionary document that pulls together strategies from across the globe to assist diverse stakeholders in implementing different modalities of data governance that are people-centric. The Playbook has specific sectoral pull-outs for Environment and Health that address strategies related to public health priorities, patient rights over health data and accessing environmental data and consequential impacts. This work builds on Aapti’s extensive work exploring various modalities of data stewardship and incubating data stewards, especially in the Global South.

Data2X is a United Nations Foundation organisation with a mission to improve the quality, availability, and use of gender data to make a practical difference in the lives of women and girls worldwide. Over the past ten years, Data2X has evolved from a small start-up to a recognized global civil society organization with the networks and expertise to drive progress on gender data. Data2X’s work has concretely defined the gender data problem, improved data availability in key domains, and made gender data a priority within the development community.