• A new framework offers four trigger approaches, i.e. surveillance, climate forecasts, composite risk, and predictive modelling, to inform anticipatory humanitarian action.
• Climate–health links often involve delayed effects, making predictive capacity vital for a timely response. Anticipatory action could contain or prevent epidemics, reducing preventable suffering in vulnerable contexts.

A new innovative framework to integrate anticipatory action into epidemic preparedness and response in the humanitarian sector has been introduced by a group of multidisciplinary researchers, led by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre Senior Advisor and visiting researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), Tilly Alcayna. Published in BMJ Global Health, the work outlines a set of data-driven triggers that can activate pre-planned measures before an outbreak escalates, offering a shift from reactive crisis management to proactive preparedness.

Drawing on operational experience from the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, United Nations agencies, and Médecins Sans Frontières since 2014, the research proposes a systematic approach that combines early warning information with prearranged funding to act before a crisis peaks. While anticipatory action has been widely applied to extreme weather events, this work demonstrates its growing potential in epidemic response.

The study describes four categories of outbreak triggers:

1. Surveillance-based triggers, such as rapid increases in suspected or confirmed cases, form the basis of most existing outbreak response activities.
2. Weather-driven triggers, based on short- and medium-range climate forecasts of extreme events that are known to drive increased disease transmission risk.
3. Composite risk triggers, by combining environmental, climatic, and socioeconomic indicators (such as displacement, overcrowding, or vector presence) with health surveillance data.
4. Climate-driven predictive models, based on associations between historical meteorological and environmental data and epidemiological data.
   
   

This layered approach allows for tailored responses depending on the certainty and urgency of the risk, with surveillance data remaining the most reliable basis for action.

Understanding climate–disease dynamics

Complementing the study, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre highlights that climate change (including variables such as temperature, rainfall, and humidity) can affect disease transmission with time-lagged impacts. For example, a climatic event may influence mosquito populations or water quality weeks later, shifting outbreak risk over time.

This complexity underscores the importance of integrating climate services into public health systems, enabling health agencies and humanitarian actors to anticipate not only when, but also how, climate factors may influence disease emergence.

Implications for humanitarian aid

By linking climate intelligence with outbreak preparedness, the research, led by Tilly Alcayna, who is visiting the Global Health Resilience group at BSC’s Earth Sciences Department, marks an important step toward the wider use of climate-informed early warning systems for epidemic preparedness and response. The study,gn which BSC researchers Rachel Lowe, ICREA professor and leader of the GHR group, and Chloe Fletcher, PhD student in the same group, also participated, calls for policy and operational changes to institutionalise anticipatory mechanisms in humanitarian planning. This includes sustained investment in early warning systems, robust data sharing, and cross-sectoral collaboration between climate scientists, health experts, and humanitarian actors.

Reference:

Alcayna T, Kellerhaus F, Tremblay L, Fletcher C, Goodermote R, Santos-Vega M, et al. Integrating anticipatory action in disease outbreak preparedness and response in the humanitarian sector. BMJ Global Health. 2025;10:e017721. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2024-017721.