India is gradually realizing the urgency to establish well-prepared and responsive health systems to combat health risks posed by climate change. The health impacts of climate change are a complex problem, operating through many indirect pathways. It requires context-specific, flexible, adaptive health responses, demanding bottom-up approaches and active community engagement. The present case study explores this issue. It seeks to understand how can community-level processes and mechanisms enable the existing village-level health system to integrate the climate change dimension. The exploration was done through ‘sharing learning’ and ‘action-oriented’ dialogues with community stakeholders with the use of classic participatory rural appraisal tools.

Based on the learnings of this case study, the present report discusses the following aspects –

• Role of participatory learning methods/tools in educating grass-root level health system functionaries and communities on climate change and health aspects.
• Role of participatory processes in climate-induced health vulnerability mapping
• Potential opportunities within the existing health system to integrate the climate change dimension