SHADE Newsletter 20th November 2025

Welcome to the forty second edition of the SHADE newsletter! 

SHADE is a research hub with a mission to explore issues at the intersection of digital technologies/AI, health and the environment. It is guided by a fundamental question: How should the balance between AI/digital enabled health and planetary health be struck in different areas of the world, and what should be the guiding principles?

The SHADE newsletter comes out four times a year. It takes an in depth look at selected topics, as well as highlighting new resources, events and opportunities in the SHADE space.

In this newsletter we highlight Digital Public Goods. We also look at 2025 roundups - on AMR, from the Lancet Countdown, from COP30 and on global carbon emissions. We conclude with a selection of resources, events and opportunities. We hope you enjoy it!

Please tell us what you like, what you don’t like and what you think is missing at [email protected].   

Digital Public Goods

• PATH Digital Square have launched Climate Services for Health. An extension to the existing Global Goods Guidebook, this annex features digital tools specifically designed to help health systems adapt to climate change impacts and build resilience for vulnerable populations. The annex also references the Green Digital Health Tool, developed in part by SHADE members.

• DHIS2 is one of the featured Global Goods in the annex. DHIS2 are having their first ever Climate and Health Academy in Oslo, Norway from June 15th to June 18th 2026. The Academy will ‘provide technical training on innovative DHIS2 tools for climate data integration and predictive modeling, and share learnings from real-world use cases to help catalyze the use of DHIS2 systems and data to strengthen climate-resilient health systems.’ The Academy will run in parallel with the DHIS2 Annual Conference. Registration will open in January 2026.

2025 Round Ups

• It’s World AMR Awareness week and the One Health Trust has compiled a 2025 Special AMR Edition: Explore AMR research spanning a wide range of topics, from surveillance and social and economic inequities to control strategies, public policy, costing studies, and more.

• As the 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change highlights the growing human costs of delayed climate change actions, this episode of the One World, One Health podcast talks to one of the report’s authors, Dr. Tafadzwa Mabhaudhi, and finds hope in one trend which is being led by communities and cities rather than national governments.

• As the final week of COP30 draws to a close, the World Economic Forum (WEF) gives a round up on what’s happened so far. This includes the endorsements received, and funds pledged, for the Belém Health Action Plan (BHAP) for the adaptation of the health sector to climate change. This plan serves as an integrating umbrella for adaptation solutions encompassing health surveillance, technological innovation, and the strengthening of multisectoral policies. It provides a framework to advance COP30’s Action Agenda.

• The WEF article also highlights that fossil fuel emissions are projected to rise again in 2025 - Hannah Richie gives the low down on what happened to global carbon emissions this year.

Resources, Events and Opportunities

• Do you want to contrbute to improving the design of carbon calculators for computing activities? Join one of Green Algorithms’ co-design workshops happening on line on December 4th and December 12th. Find out more and register here.

• In person and virtual tickets are still available for the Global Digital Health Forum 2025, happening in Nairobi, Kenya between the 3rd and 5th December. The forum includes a health and climate track. Find out more and register.

• This editorial piece from Nature highlights why Official statistics are vastly undercounting deaths from extreme weather.

• This article from PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) highlights the scale of the additional e-waste that is likely to be generated by Microsoft’s decision to end free support and security updates for Windows 10. Noting the threat to the environment that e-waste poses, the article invites readers to join their campaign to get Microsoft to change its mind.

• Two reports on heat attributable deaths: First up, Heat Impacts on Health in Scotland from Public Health Scotland. This report highlights the estimated heat impacts on mortality in Scotland during the summer months over the last 20 years. Secondly, from the Grantham Institute, Summer heat deaths in 854 European cities more than tripled due to climate change.

And finally, as concerns rise and fall over the AI boom, Hugging Face bring us the lowdown on the environmental impact of AI Data Centres.

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