The project aims to enhance APHRC’s capacity to engage communities meaningfully on complex and interconnected issues affecting their lives. It seeks to empower community-organized groups (COGs) in Nairobi and Kisumu’s informal settlements to understand, communicate, and act on the relationships between food systems, climate change, and health. By doing so, it strengthens the bridge between research, policy, and social change.

Using participatory visual methodologies (PVMs)—such as photovoice, digital storytelling, community dialogues, and creative arts—the project brings science closer to the people, translating technical evidence into accessible and relatable narratives. Through training, mentorship, and small grants, COGs will lead local engagements that promote awareness, stimulate dialogue, and inspire collective action for food systems transformation and climate resilience.

Visibilize4ClimateAction is a Wellcome-funded project led by the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC) aimed at making visible the often-overlooked impacts of climate change on nutrition and mental health among vulnerable populations in the East African drylands. These regions—spanning Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania—are increasingly experiencing heatwaves, recurrent droughts, flooding, and land degradation, all of which undermine food security, ecological health, and overall well-being.

The project seeks to generate robust evidence linking climate change to undernutrition among children under five, and among girls and women of reproductive age, as well as to mental health challenges in affected communities. It combines historical data analysis, ecological and health assessments, scenario modeling, and documentation of lived experiences.

Alongside research, the project emphasizes public engagement to strengthen community understanding of climate impacts and policy engagement to promote evidence-informed climate actions at local, national, and regional levels.

Ultimately, Visibilize4Climate Action aims to catalyze context-specific, scalable climate policy and practice reforms that protect the health and livelihoods of populations living in East Africa’s drylands.

Download the project brief for more information. 

Pathfinder II builds on the first phase of the Pathfinder Initiative to accelerate action toward a healthy, net-zero future. The project generates context-specific evidence on the health and climate benefits of mitigation actions and strengthens the capacity of institutions to design, implement, and evaluate these actions using co-design principles.

Implemented through three work packages—Evidence for Action, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Capacity Strengthening—Pathfinder II promotes collaboration through the Coalition on Climate Action for Health and supports policy integration of health co-benefits in climate planning. The project runs from August 2023 to December 2025, funded by Wellcome, and led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in partnership with APHRC and AFIDEP.

Download the project brief for more information.