💬 Biography
Professor Shereen Hussein is Professor of Health and Social Care Policy at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. With a background in statistics, computer science, and medical demography, she holds an MSc from LSHTM and a PhD from the London School of Economics. Professor Hussein is a leading international expert in ageing, long-term care, health and social care workforce systems, and migration.
She currently directs the LSHTM Centre for Care Policy and Research and is the founder of the MENARAH Network, which advances ageing and health policy across the Middle East and North Africa. Her research has shaped national and international policy, with advisory roles to the WHO, UN, World Bank, and OECD. Professor Hussein has led pivotal studies on the COVID-19 impact on care homes and migrant care workers. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Population Health Metrics and author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications.
🎤 Presentation: Climate Change as a Structural Risk to Long-Term Care: A Climate-Tailored Framework for Ageing Societies
Population ageing and climate change are two defining global transformations of the twenty-first century, yet they continue to be addressed through largely separate policy and governance agendas. Older adults and people with disabilities, who constitute the majority of long-term care users, are among those most exposed to climate-related hazards, including heatwaves, flooding, wildfires, air pollution, and extreme weather events. At the same time, long-term care systems are structurally vulnerable to climate risks through their reliance on physical infrastructure, energy and water systems, workforce capacity, supply chains, and social support networks. Despite this, long-term care remains marginal within national climate adaptation strategies and global health resilience frameworks.
This keynote synthesises international evidence and policy analysis to position long-term care as a critical pillar of climate-resilient and age-friendly societies. It introduces a climate-tailored integrated long-term care framework that bridges two key global policy instruments: the WHO Integrated Long-Term Care Framework and the WHO Operational Framework for Climate-Resilient and Low-Carbon Health Systems. By bringing these frameworks into dialogue, the proposed model addresses a major gap in international guidance where climate action, healthy ageing, and care system reform remain insufficiently aligned.
The framework embeds climate adaptation, emergency preparedness, and decarbonisation across four long-term care domains: long-term care needs, governance, service delivery, and system enablers. Equity, user participation, and protection of care-dependent populations are positioned as core principles, reflecting global commitments to disability-inclusive and rights-based climate action. The keynote concludes by outlining priority actions for governments, international agencies, and ageing stakeholders to integrate long-term care into climate policy, health system resilience, and sustainable development agendas.