Participatory research and community engagement in climate and health research

Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, February 2026

Link to the paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12947197/ 

Together with colleagues in Chile and Zimbabwe, Dr Anh Vu has published a paper on the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on “Participatory research and community engagement in climate and health research”, drawing lessons from projects in Zimbabwe and Vietnam. 

As climate change increasingly reshapes global health risks, its impacts are felt most acutely by communities with the least power to influence policy decisions. Research intended to guide climate adaptation and mitigation therefore cannot simply be conducted about communities; it must be carried out with them. Without meaningful engagement, climate–health research risks becoming irrelevant, extractive or even harmful.

In this WHO Bulletin perspective, the authors argue that while participatory research is widely promoted as best practice, implementing it ethically and effectively remains challenging. Drawing on discussions from the 2024 Global Forum on Bioethics in Research, the paper highlights lessons from two case studies that illustrate the practical and ethical dilemmas involved in community-engaged climate–health research.

Lessons from two real-world case studies

The first case study examined climate adaptation interventions in the mid-Zambezi Valley in Zimbabwe, a region highly vulnerable to recurrent drought. The research evaluated the nutritional and psychosocial health impacts of selected adaptation actions. It revealed ethical challenges around who decides which adaptation strategies should be studied, how to ensure the meaningful inclusion of the most vulnerable community members, and what responsibilities researchers hold when working with populations facing escalating climate risks.

The second case study focused on informal outdoor workers in urban Viet Nam, who face significant exposure to climate hazards such as heatwaves and extreme rainfall. The research explored both health risks and adaptive capacities, while highlighting the particular vulnerabilities of informal workers and the political sensitivities surrounding their employment conditions and relationships with employers and the state.

Ethical dilemmas in participatory climate–health research

Across both case studies, the authors identify three central ethical tensions:

• Whose priorities shape research agendas? Community needs and scientific objectives may diverge.
• How can scientific rigour be balanced with genuine participation? Standardised research methods can limit meaningful community input.
• How can urgent climate action align with the time required for trust-building and engagement? Participatory processes often require longer timelines than conventional research cycles.

These dilemmas illustrate that ethical participation cannot be reduced to procedural “tick-box” engagement. Instead, it requires sustained dialogue, reflexivity and the willingness to renegotiate research priorities throughout the research process. 

Towards truly participatory climate–health research

The authors call for a shift towards research models that emphasise ongoing negotiation of power, participatory priority-setting and holistic risk assessment. This approach recognises communities not merely as research participants but as knowledge producers, whose lived experiences of climate impacts are essential to shaping meaningful and actionable research.

Such approaches are particularly important where climate vulnerability intersects with existing structural inequalities. Ethical climate–health research must therefore ensure that research outcomes translate into tangible benefits for participating communities—whether through improved services, capacity-building or policy influence. 

This publication marks an important contribution by NatCen and its international collaborators to the growing field of climate and health research, highlighting how rigorous, ethically grounded participatory approaches can strengthen both the quality and the impact of evidence used to address one of the defining health challenges of our time.