The math is brutal. Development assistance for health is on track to fall 22%—roughly $11.2 billion—between 2024 and 2025, according to research published last August. Another 6% drop is forecast by decade's end. For digital health startups that have spent years chasing multilateral grants and public health funding, the traditional non-dilutive pipeline is narrowing fast.
But here's the turn: while one funding stream contracts, another is swelling.
At COP30 in November, a coalition of more than 35 philanthropies pledged $300 million specifically for climate-and-health solutions targeting low- and middle-income countries. Wellcome deployed £145 million on climate and health in fiscal 2024/25. In September, ARPA-H announced the winners of its BREATHE program, funding building-scale indoor air quality sensing. And UNICEF's Venture Fund opened an equity-free call—up to $100,000 per startup—for frontier tech addressing climate and child health. Applications are due May 17.
The pivot, in short, is unmistakable. As traditional health aid contracts, climate-health has emerged as one of the few growth verticals in the non-dilutive world.
Why the Sector Is Doubling Down
Health systems worldwide account for an estimated 4.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions—a baseline figure that continues to anchor decarbonization roadmaps. At the same time, climate change is actively degrading health outcomes, and the data keeps getting worse.
The Lancet Countdown 2023, published last October, documented a 167% increase in heat-related mortality among people over 65 compared to the 1990s. It tallied a record 512 billion labor hours lost to heat in 2023 alone—equivalent to roughly $835 billion in lost income. The Lancet Countdown 2024 edition estimated millions of annual deaths linked to climate change via heat, air pollution, disease, and food insecurity. Productivity losses topped $1.09 trillion in 2024.
This dual pressure—health care as climate culprit, health systems as climate victim—has created a new category of fundable innovation. Multilaterals, development banks, and philanthropies are actively seeking digital health tools that either reduce the sector's carbon footprint or help populations adapt to climate-driven health threats.
Consider the UK's National Health Service. Procurement rules now require Carbon Reduction Plans for contracts over £5 million, a policy in effect since April 2023. By policy updates noted last September, roughly 90% of NHS non-pay spend falls under net-zero commitments.
The sector isn't debating whether climate and health intersect anymore. Funders are underwriting the intersection.
Policy Momentum, Real Dollars
Part of the shift is pure policy.
COP28 on December 3, 2023, launched the first-ever Health Day, with more than 120 countries backing a Climate & Health Declaration. That visibility catalyzed finance commitments now flowing into the field. The $300 million philanthropic pledge at COP30 directly targets implementation of the Belém Health Action Plan, steering capital toward solutions that address climate-health needs in lower- and middle-income countries.
But policy alone doesn't explain the velocity. Digital health entrepreneurs are demonstrating measurable climate impact—and funders are paying attention.
A study published in April in the American Journal of Managed Care analyzed U.S. telemedicine from April to June 2023 and found it averted up to 47.6 million kilograms of CO₂ per month. That's roughly equivalent to taking up to 130,000 gas-powered cars off the road every month. A 2025 study in Frontiers in Digital Health quantified carbon reductions from more than 50,000 remote consultations in a Brazilian hospital. These aren't hypothetical co-benefits. They're measured emissions reductions tied to scalable digital interventions.
Perhaps most telling: the technical infrastructure for climate-informed health systems is maturing. PATH's Digital Square initiative, in partnership with WHO and the World Meteorological Organization, has launched calls for digital public goods that integrate climate services into health systems. Wellcome committed approximately £14.5 million in November 2023 to embed climate data into DHIS2, the open-source platform used by health ministries in over 70 countries. FHIR ecosystem developments over the past two years now enable standardized exchange of environmental and exposure data relevant to climate-health workflows.
Funders are betting the technology is ready.
What the Equity-Free Money Is Buying
The UNICEF Venture Fund's Climate Action Cohort offers a window into what equity-free, open-source innovation looks like at this nexus.
Between 2023 and 2025, the fund supported eight startups piloting AI and IoT early-warning systems for environmental incidents—companies like Equinoct, which built flood early warning systems; Map & Rank, focused on flood risk and response; and Similie, developing modular IoT and AI early-warning platforms. In August, UNICEF reported cohort outcomes: $7.75 million in revenue, $2.29 million in profit, $1.09 million in follow-on investment, and 601,000 people reached.
The grants were equity-free. Startups retained full ownership while building open-source tools designed for rapid deployment in climate-vulnerable communities.
In the UK, SBRI Healthcare has distributed £10.3 million across 40 innovations supporting the NHS Net Zero ambition, according to an Earth Day update. Recipients include Walk With Path, which developed smart insoles to reduce patient travel and disposable use; Definition Health, which created a digital surgical pathway to cut emissions; and Blum Health, which built digital demand-mapping tools to avoid unnecessary diagnostic tests. These are equity-free grants, typically ranging from £100,000 to £1 million per phase, awarded to small and medium enterprises developing digital sustainability solutions.
ARPA-H's BREATHE program, which announced awardees in September, is funding building-scale interventions to reduce airborne health threats. Poppy Health, one awardee, is developing genetic air sensors for proactive pathogen detection and indoor air quality risk intelligence. The awards are structured as non-dilutive federal grants with milestone-based cooperative agreements.
Even smaller, state-level programs are channeling capital into this space. California's Community Air Grants program awarded $20.9 million to 43 community-based organizations and four tribal entities in May, supporting digital air quality networks and exposure mapping. Boston launched a Community Clean Air Grants round in 2025. Utah's UCAIR has a 2026 grants cycle underway. New York's Department of Environmental Conservation awarded $3 million in environmental justice-oriented air pollution grants in September 2024.
The funding isn't coming from a single source or geography. It's distributed, multi-scale, and growing.
Volatility Remains
Founders should understand that climate-health is not insulated from broader policy volatility—particularly in the U.S.
ProPublica reported in March that the National Institutes of Health would no longer fund new work on the health effects of climate change, though subsequent litigation and injunctions created uncertainty through much of the year and into 2026. The EPA's tightened PM2.5 standard, announced in February 2024, faced rollback efforts in late 2025 and early this year. OSHA's proposed federal heat standard, published in August 2024, remains in rulemaking. U.S. environmental health rules are in flux.
But the opportunities extend well beyond American borders.
The WHO/WMO Joint Programme, in partnership with PATH Digital Square, closed an open call for digital "global goods" integrating climate services for health at the end of April. Funders included the Rockefeller Foundation and Wellcome. Rockefeller has also committed funding for real-time meteorological alerts for health officials, announced in May, following an earlier December initiative to integrate global climate and health data through PATH.
Expect philanthropy and multilaterals to play an even stronger role as development assistance for health declines through 2030. The $300 million COP30 commitment signals that climate-health is a priority even as broader DAH contracts. Digital public infrastructure—particularly interoperable early-warning systems and climate-informed surveillance platforms—will likely see accelerated investment, driven by programs like PATH's DPI for Climate Health Resilience and UNICEF's child-focused climate-health efforts.
Procurement-driven decarbonization will continue to nudge digital health vendors toward embedded carbon accounting, virtual care optimization, and supply-chain visibility. The NHS supplier roadmap, updated through last year, is escalating requirements. California's SB 253 and SB 261, with 2026 effective timelines, are pushing emissions and risk reporting even amid ongoing legal challenges.
The Strategic Calculus
For founders, the question is no longer whether climate-health merits attention.
It's whether your solution can meet the specific, often overlapping, requirements of these non-dilutive funders: open source (UNICEF), digital public goods architecture (WHO/WMO/PATH), emissions measurement and reporting (NHS procurement, SBRI), or climate-sensitive disease forecasting (Global Fund, DHIS2 integration).
The capital is there. The UNICEF call closes May 17. EPA SBIR rounds cycle annually; the January round awarded $2.4 million across 24 small businesses, with indoor air quality among the priority topics. Sub-national clean air grants are running on 12- to 24-month cycles. Wellcome's Climate Impacts Awards and climate-health schemes have been running calls through the past few years.
What's required is not generic "climate tech" or "digital health."
It's the specific convergence: solutions that reduce health system emissions, adapt care delivery to climate threats, or protect populations from climate-driven health risks—preferably with open-source licensing, measurable impact, and infrastructure that integrates with existing public health platforms.
The $300 million is real. The question is whether your pitch fits the brief.
