Climate change is among the greatest threats to health in the 21st century, requiring the urgent scaling-up of adaptation interventions. We aim to summarise adaptation interventions that were funded by the Belmont Forum and the European Union, the largest global funders of climate change and health research. A systematic search was conducted (updated February 2023) to identify articles on adaptation interventions for health within this funding network. The data extracted included study characteristics, types of interventions, and study outcomes. The results were synthesised narratively within the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. A total of 197 articles were screened, with 37 reporting on adaptation interventions. The majority of interventions focused on the general population (n = 17), with few studies examining high-risk populations such as pregnant women and children (n = 4) or migrants (n = 0). Targeted interventions were mostly aimed at behavioural change (n = 8) and health system strengthening (n = 6), while interventions with mitigation co-benefits such as nature-based solutions (n = 1) or the built environment (n = 0) were limited. The most studied climate change hazard was extreme heat (n = 26). Several studies reported promising findings, principally regarding interventions to counter heat impacts on workers and pregnant women and improving risk awareness in communities. These findings provide a platform on which to expand research and public health interventions for safeguarding public health from the effects of climate change.

Climate Change is among the greatest threats to health in the 21st century, requiring urgent scale-up of adaptation interventions. We aim to summarize adaptation interventions that were funded by the Belmont Forum and the European Union, the largest global funders of climate change and health research. A systematic search was conducted (updated February 2023) to identify articles on adaptation interventions for health within this funding network. Data extracted included study characteristics, types of interventions, and study outcomes. Results were synthesised narratively within the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. 197 articles were screened, with 37 reporting on adaptation interventions. The majority of interventions focused on the general population (n=17), with few studies examining high-risk populations such as pregnant women and children (n=4) or migrants (n=0). Targeted interventions were mostly aimed at behaviour change (n=8) and health system strengthening (n=6), while interventions with mitigation co-benefits such as nature-based solutions (n=1) or the built environment (n=0) were limited. The most studied climate change hazard was extreme heat (n=26). Several studies reported promising findings, principally on interventions to counter heat impacts in workers and pregnant women, and improving risk awareness in communities. These findings provide a platform on which to expand research and public health interventions towards safeguarding public health from the effects of climate change.

Extreme climate events like droughts and floods are creating urgent challenges for sectors such as Agriculture or water management. Effective adaptation requires stakeholder collaboration, supported by stakeholder analysis (SA) methods, which are still evolving in environmental management. We briefly reviewed examples of recent existing systematic evidence syntheses on SA across different domains. This highlighted several SA challenges, including the lack of transparent, common methods—particularly for climate-induced extreme events—and weak links between SA results and policy or practice. We then present a case study that illustrates these challenges and suggests ways to address them. Cooperating with a local network organisation, the Living Lab Schouwen-Duiveland (LAB), we conducted a case study on the island of Schouwen-Duiveland (NL), which is trying to adapt to drought. Applying a novel stakeholder analysis method, the “Rings of involvement”, which enables the visualisation of stakeholders’ levels of affectedness regarding the issue, we were able to identify and categorise the stakeholder network in a systematic manner. We identified stakeholder groups, such as “Implementers”, who are not yet in the network but likely hold key practical knowledge to address local-regional climate adaptation. This calls for a better institutionalisation of and a more dynamic approach to SA in the local climate change adaptation practices. Based on our case study, we suggest that future studies could explore under which conditions a network organisation (such as the LAB) acts as a dynamic platform for facilitating stakeholder knowledge co-production.