ClimaSMART: Solar-Powered Healthcare Infrastructure for an Extreme-Weather Event (EVE)-prone World

One of the biggest development challenges in developing countries in ASEAN, MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America (especially Central America) as well as South Asia is climate change.[1] In emerging markets such as Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Philippines and Mexico, all nations of 115+ million people, extreme weather events (e.g. massive flooding, severe drought, etc.) have internally or externally displaced millions of vulnerable people, culminating in a life-threatening struggle to migrate to the US, Canada and Europe.  

Fragile populations across emerging markets lack social safety nets, are financially excluded, have little to no savings and have minimal access to affordable, (income-generating) asset protection services (e.g. crop, livestock, life and health insurance for women smallholder farmers).

The World Bank estimates that there are 600+ million workers globally who are linked formally or informally to corporate supply & value chains who fall into one or more of these categories (e.g. smallholder suppliers, seasonal farmers, distributor sales force, SME retailers, micro-retailers, factory workers, etc.). This population includes an estimated 35 million migrant workers/refugees/internally displaced people (out of which 11 million undocumented immigrants are based in the US alone).

In both developing countries and developed countries (eg. the US), lack of access to affordable, preventive healthcare can lead to catastrophic health events (e.g. heart attacks, strokes, mental health-associated trauma, maternal hemorrhage, etc). Populations at heightened risk include migrant workers, refugees, internally displaced people and ethnic minorities. These fragile populations embody the ‘missing middle’ - neither are they eligible for national health insurance or government social security programs (usually because of their (il)legal or ‘nomadic’ status) nor can they afford quality, private sector healthcare.   

ClimaSMART clinics are ‘climate-smart’, solar-powered, pre-fabricated ‘hybrid’ clinics that can be statically located in Extreme Weather Event (EVE)-prone areas or dynamically mobilized across regions impacted by (emerging) natural disasters via tractor-trailers). These SMART clinics leverage renewable energy, AI-enabled exponential technology & lightweight, aluminized, climate-friendly infrastructure.

ClimaSMART clinics enable the delivery of high-quality, healthcare for the internally displaced as well as underserved, fragile communities at risk of forced displacement    

A nurse, community health worker, midwife or paramedic from within the target community is recruited and upskilled on technology, equipped with a 4G tablet and deployed inside each ClimaSMART clinic.  These female paramedics connect climate-impacted beneficiaries to our global network of remotely located female healthcare providers (HCPs including therapists, doctors, nutritionists, etc.). 

ClimaSMART benefits low-income, underserved (migrant) workers linked informally or formally to corporate and industrial value chains (e.g. smallholder suppliers, seasonal farmers, distributor sales force, SME retailers, micro-retailers and factory workers linked to the supply chains and value chains of MNCs such as Unilever, Mondelez, Friesland Campina, Tommy Hilfiger, Levis, etc.).

 Household incomes for the target population range between $3/day and $10/day.

A significant portion of the target population consists of internally displaced people (IDPs) who work as seasonal farmers in agri-value chains (e.g. cotton pickers, dairy or livestock farmers, etc.) or as factory workers in the garment/textile industry which is prevalent across East Africa, the ASEAN region and South Asia.

ClimaSMART enhances the resilience of these fragile populations, providing them with human asset protection -  the most valuable income-generating assets are the human mind and body;  these assets are protected via tech-enabled, high-quality healthcare, delivered at ClimaSMART clinics.

The ClimaSMART team is a is a multidisciplinary group of entrepreneurs, doctors, nurses, MBAs, design thinkers and UX experts. One Co-Founder is a former VP Sales at Thomson-Reuters (USA) with expertise in women’s entrepreneurship – she has also accelerated over 200 women-led businesses as part of a World Bank Women X accelerator. The other Co-Founder is a US-trained medical doctor-cum-MBA (in finance) with over 25 years of healthcare experience in global health systems.

The ClimaSMART team is fluent in Hindi/Urdu (spoken in India and Pakistan) and represents the communities it works in. The team has spent over 10 years on-ground in South Asia and is sensitized to the local cultures and social norms.   

The ClimaSMART program was co-created with the direct input of the target population using human-centered design thinking. Members of the ClimaSMART team embedded themselves within target communities as well as diverse work environments (factories, fields and farms in EVE-prone areas) and silently observed the lived experience and unmet health needs of value chain workers and their families (especially women, children and the elderly) . Direct customer feedback as well as immersive, experiential and iterative learning guided the ClimaSMART team during the program design, prototype and pilot phases. During the rapid prototype phase, several revisions were made to the digitally integrated health (finance + service delivery) model (e.g. any user fee payments were made via digital bank accounts. These accounts were automatically opened for beneficiaries (especially women) to help promote their financial inclusion, increasing their overall resilience.

ClimaSMART clinics catering to ~250,000 lives are operational in peri-urban industrial areas vulnerable to massive, flash flooding. These Extreme Weather Events (EVEs) cause frequent ‘blackouts’ and ‘brown-outs’ as these communities are disconnected from the electricity grid to prevent electrocution from high-voltage live wires (an unfortunate but frequent occurrence in the past in these communities).

Massive cesspools of stagnant water lead to water-borne and mosquito-borne disease epidemics (dengue, malaria, cholera) that can culminate in death, especially amongst immunocompromised populations (children, people living with HIV-AIDs, etc.)

We believe SOLVE can help us in the following ways:

Markets: SOLVE can introduce us to large corporate clients in the US with whom we can partner & offer our ‘climate-SMART’ mobile clinical services to cimate-affected communities linked to their value chains

AI Technology: Access to AI expertise (predictive analytics) would enable our Clean-Tech solar energy system to shift our beneficiary populations from being net users of energy (on-grid electricity) to carbon-neutral (or net zero) consumers. In this scenario, the energy supply would toggle back and forth between solar and on-grid (if solar is unavailable) with all surplus solar-powered electricity sold back to the grid.

In addition, providing our beneficiaries with real-time access to generative AI (via a mobile-app-enabled chatbot) would help improve our efficiency in response to customers (health-seekers) with ‘just-in-time’ healthcare needs delivered via our mobile ClimaSMART clinics.

Entrepreneurial Learning Journey: We would like to share key insights from our entrepreneurial journey with other SOLVERs via a peer-group knowledge exchange.

Visibility with Mission-Aligned Impact Investors: SOLVE provides impact ventures with a tremendous opportunity for potential investor-investee matching, especially via the Marquis event in NYC every September.

ClimaSMART is a globally innovative approach that thrives at the intersection of climate change (SDG 13), gender equity (SDG5 and 8) and AI-enabled transformative healthcare (SDGs 3, 9, 10 & 11). It simultaneously tackles 3 major market failures: 

(i) millions of Internally or Externally Displaced People (IDPs, EDPs) who are vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change-induced Extreme Weather Events (EVEs), e.g. additional displacement, climate-change-induced pandemics, epidemics, etc., 

(ii) Lack of Climate-Friendly Infrastructure in the developing world - most of the infrastructure in developing countries is not earthquake-proof and is usually stationary (not mobile or agile); 

(iii) Climate change has exacerbated global pandemics and epidemics (e.g. COVID-19, malaria, and dengue in flooded areas) - 

By using Solar-Powered, mobile (dynamic), AI-enabled, gender-equal, exponential technology-based clinics, we can enhance the resilience of climate-change-affected communities to cope with climate change. 

Our Theory of Change is the following: we believe that renewable energy, corporate value chains and human talent (the ‘inputs) lead to the provision of high-quality, AI-enabled healthcare benefiting underserved value chain workers (the ‘outputs’). These outputs lead to improved, affordable access to exponential-technology-enhanced healthcare (the ‘intermediate-term outcomes’) that culminate in increased resilience to climate-change-induced Extreme Weather Events (EVEs) and climate-affected environments (the ‘long-term outcomes’)

Impact goals for our Climate SMART solution include:

(i)                    Improved health outcomes in value-chain workers and their families/dependents

(ii)                  Improved financial return on investment (ROI) for corporate financiers of healthcare plans benefiting value chain workers (including IDPs and migrant workers)

These goals are measured quarterly and annually using the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

(i)                  % relative change in prevalence of mood disorders (anxiety, depression, PTSD) in the target population

(ii)                 % relative change in Incidence of Climate-Change Associated Communicable Diseases (CDs) in the target population (e.g. Malaria, Dengue, etc)

(iii)                 % change in carbon emissions (fuel-generator-powered energy supply to conventional clinics versus solar-powered energy supply to ClimaSMART clinics)

Solar Power is the core technology powering our climate-change-resilient healthcare delivery model.

In addition, we use AI-enabled, exponential technology to predict Extreme Weather Events (EVEs) that enable the dynamic placement of our ClimaSMART clinics

30 Full-time; 30 Part-Time

The ClimaSMART team is fluent in Hindi/Urdu (spoken in India and Pakistan) and represents the communities it works in. The gender-equal team has spent over 10 years on-ground in Asia and is sensitized to the local cultures and social norms. 25% of the team is comprised of ethnic minorities and 60% of the Senior Management Team are women. 

For every Dollar (Rupee) we collect from a Multinational Corporate Client-Sponsor, 40% covers the cost of the female healthcare providers, 20% covers the operating costs of the solar tech system, 20% covers general operating expenses, yielding a 20% surplus at the unit economic level.  The solution is forecast to be cash-flow positive  (and grant-independent) by 2026.

NAYA JEEVAN (the hybrid social enterprise) has raised over $3 million in R&D innovation grants which have financed globally innovative solutions such as ClimaSMART. NAYA JEEVAN is currently raising a $6 million round to scale the ClimaSMART model to 200, solar-powered, mobile (telemedicine) clinics.