The Islands and Small States Institute (ISSI) at the University of Malta is pleased to introduce the project “Beyond Pandemics: Improving climate resilience and health systems in small island states”, which received the Research Excellence Award in December 2021, financed by the University of Malta’s Internal Research Grants Programme, and started in March 2022.
This project aims to identify existing climate & public health risks, as well as resilience-building measures, in Small Island States (SIS), often disproportionately impacted by external shocks. A crisis like Covid-19 highly impacted the socioeconomic fabric of many SIS, in many instances already challenged by limited financial capacity & infrastructure, long supply chains & looming climate change scenarios. The project employs a mixed-methods approach inclusive of participatory focus groups, elite interviews, and household surveys, to assess health systems in the two small island states of Malta and Mauritius, investigating factors capable of increasing both climate & health resilience. The project also explores the adoption of a Planetary Health Approach, which uses a systematic perspective to link the environment & health systems to proactively overcome external shocks.
The project positions itself in a growing area of research: that of resilience of climate and health systems in a post-pandemic world. The current uncertainties over the effectiveness of climate and public health measures undertaken by authorities to enhance resilience, gives to this project a high relevance and a strong innovation component. The objective to create a map of effective responses to climate and health crises in SIS is valuable to national governments, with the potential of guiding policy locally. Internationally, this project also seeks to meet an overarching objective to support the work of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre (WHO-CC) in Health Systems and Policies in Small States, hosted by the ISSI of the University of Malta, and that of the Small States Health Platform and Climate Change Platform of the UM.
