Last week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, I reconnected with many of Billion Minds Institute’s with those anchoring and supporting the first wave of Early Adopters that are at the leading edge of Billion Minds Institute’s global work plan launched and adopted at COP28 — The Roadmap for Care and Change — fashioning an actionable path to making psychological resilience part of climate resilience as a new global norm.
BMI was among six efforts showcased at the OECD netFWD Health and Climate Working Group event that are advancing the audacious scale necessary to catch up and realize a truly global health and climate infrastructure.
I also had opportunities to catch up with key collaborators in the UN and other multilateral organizations and NGO partners through the Coalition for Mental Health Investment and through the week. I am especially grateful to have had time to connect, with colleagues that capture the range of expertise and action that this work requires, such as Giselle Sebag (ISUH), Harris Eyre (Advancing the Brain Economy, Rice University Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy), Dixon Chibanda.(Friendship Bench, AMARI), Alessandro Massazza (United for Global Mental Health), Marie Dahl (MHPSS Collaborative), Erica Coe and Kana Emoto (McKinsey), and Tamer Rabie (World Bank).?
The unexpected pleasure of seeing my former colleague Ashwin Vasan tell it like it is at the Advancing Health in Cities conference, which McKinsey Health Institute, Stanford Medicine, and Clinton Health Access Initiative convened, was a bonus.
There were many opportunities to reinforce how effective climate adaptation and resilience depend on investing in sustained psycho-social adaptation and resilience, that is, the “social climate” of community mental health, wellbeing, agency, and efficacy that is needed to steward the earth’s climate.
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Billion Minds Institute is a new NGO think tank that is action-focused to enable transformative social climates anchored in community mental health.
Our Roadmap for Care and Change describes a 7-year path to shadow the UNFCCC? Race to Resilience and SAA goals for a footprint that reaches 4 billion people by 2030. It was launched at COP28 after a year of global input, as described in the UNFCCC Sharm El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda.
The Roadmap for Care and Change and its all-continents reach starts with a smart ensemble of “Early Adopter” initiatives launching through 2024. Some Early Adopters of the Roadmap for Care and Change are at work, others are ready to begin work but are awaiting funding — all of us feel the pressure of time.
