Local Health Authority Day 2025

Climate change and health

The local health authority is a central pillar in protecting the health of the population. The Local Health Authority Day is celebrated on 19 March. On 19 March 2019, RKI has proclaimed the Local Health Authority Day for the first time. It was on this day in 1745 that Johann Peter Frank was born, a physician and social medicine specialist considered as the founder of Public Health. Efficient local health authorities are the backbone of all public health efforts everywhere in the world. While hospitals and doctors' surgeries care for the well-being of individual patients, public health authorities aim at prevention measures for the broad population and also focus on population groups for whom access to regular health care is difficult or non-existent.

The motto of the Local Health Authority Day 2025 is "climate change and health".

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes climate change as the "biggest health threat facing humanity" (WHO, 2021) and recognises the Paris Agreement (2015) as the most important public health agreement of the 21st century. The International Association of Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) also considers climate change as one of the greatest global public health challenges.

Climate change affects human health in many ways, for example through extreme weather events such as droughts and heat waves, increased risk of exposure to certain pathogens, and it also has an effect on mental health (e.g. climate anxiety). In addition, the effects of climate change affect the social determinants of health and could increase social inequalities in the health of the population. The German status report on Climate Change and Health, published in 2023, provides a comprehensive synthesis of the current evidence on this topic. The report was led by the Robert Koch Institute and includes contributions from more than 100 authors from over 30 national public authorities and institutions.

Over the past years, the RKI has intensified its work on climate change and health in several subject areas throughout the institute and has established an interdepartmental working group on climate change and health to bundle the scientific work in this field. This group is coordinated by the RKI's Office for Climate Change and Health, which is responsible for the coordination and strategic development of the topic at the institute. The RKI works together with the health authorities of the federal states and the local health authorities to strengthen networking and cooperation on climate change and health at the various levels of the public health system.