In the past, public health has excelled at tackling big, global health emergencies: eradicating diseases, containing epidemics, and improving health outcomes across the world. Now we need to shift towards more proactive monitoring and horizon scanning to help foresee emerging challenges.

We will have to take bold action to combat multiple, dynamic and interacting threats from climate change, disease, and mass migration. The challenges will come thick and fast: if we wait until they’re too big to ignore, it will already be too late. Public health will need to be on the front foot; building tools to predict problems before they arise, intervening early and adopting new approaches as governments and communities.

‘Predict, prevent, prepare’ in action

Our work has modelled the changing threat from malaria and dengue fever in response to a changing climate. Integrating data on altitude and urbanisation, this work can help pinpoint where those diseases are likely to become more widespread: providing the evidence needed to monitor more, or intervene now. Read more