Estimating the economic impacts of extreme weather events on healthcare systems: A qualitative inquiry to inform the development of an evaluation framework.

The health sector is uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather events driven by climate change, experiencing impacts like increased healthcare demand and disruption to healthcare infrastructure. There is a notable gap in comprehensive methods for estimating their economic impacts on the health system. This project seeks to address this gap by developing an approach to estimate the economic impacts of extreme weather events on the health system. The project will involve three steps, 1. A review of the literature, 2. Consultation with researchers and knowledge users, 3. Piloting of the framework on a case study.
We are seeking funding for the second step of this work. Focus groups will be conducted with health economists, they will be presented case studies of extreme weather events and asked questions on approaches to costing these events with the aim of gaining insights into ways to design methods to address the complexities of extreme weather events. Additionally, interviews will be conducted with policy makers and planners to explore the kinds of health economic evidence they need to support climate resilience planning in the health system. The results will be synthesized to develop a gold-standard approach.