Paper Title
EXPLORING THE HEALTH IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE THROUGH THE LENS OF AFFECTED COMMUNITY MEMBERS: A PHOTOVOICE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PROJECT IN URBAN AND RURAL MALAWI

Abstract
Climate change has led to rising global temperatures, resulting in an increase in extreme weather events that adversely impact public health, leading to both deaths and illnesses. Approximately 3.6 billion people worldwide are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, with developing countries being disproportionately affected despite their low carbon emissions. Malawi, for instance, was devastated by Tropical Cyclone Freddy in 2023, which caused the deaths of over 1,200 individuals, widespread displacement, injuries, and significant damage to infrastructure essential for delivery of healthcare services. Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme is implementing a community engagement project adopting a bottom-up approach to understand the perspectives and lived experiences of individuals in rural and urban settings about the health impacts of climate change. Using photovoice, 20 participants were recruitedto capture their experiences through photographs and personal narratives. Key emerging themes included an increase in communicable diseases, greater exposure to zoonotic diseases, water scarcity, infrastructure damage disrupting healthcare access and delivery, low crop yields, economic loss due to business disruptions, increased sexual violence and abuse, and rising mental health issues. Participants proposed community-led sensitization, community-ledreafforestation, multisectoral collaboration and having active and up to date disaster preparedness and response plans to effectively mitigate effects of climate change. The findings from this project aim to enhance epistemic justice by co-creatingworking solutions with communities for strengthening resilience to withstand extreme weather events, advocate for policy change, and provide evidence to inform health research agendas that tackle the challenges faced by climate vulnerable communities.