From November the 13th to the 16th 2022, Belém do Pará, in Brazil, hosted the 57th Conference of the Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine  (MedTrop 2022). It was the first in-person conference organised by the Brazilian Society, after the COVID-19 pandemic. More than a thousand people attended the conference, including students, researchers and government members from across Brazil. Raquel Lana (BSC, Spain), Claudia Codeço (Fiocruz, Brazil), Christovam Barcellos (Fiocruz, Brazil) and Ana Claudia Rorato (INPE, Brazil) from the HARMONIZE Consortium, attended the meeting to present the HARMONIZE project, its main goals and expectations. In addition, these speakers shared research that will inform and benefit from HARMONIZE digital toolkits in the future.

Dr Lana delivered an oral presentation outlining the HARMONIZE project aims, outputs and advantages. This presentation was awarded a MedTrop honourable mention. Furthermore, Dr Lana participated in a round table discussion moderated by Dr Barcellos on modelling and data analysis for climate-sensitive diseases, where the HARMONIZE project was discussed in greater depth. The project goals and insights for the data infrastructure digital tools were discussed, focusing on the opportunities and gaps in data harmonisation challenges. The feedback from attendees was positive, with many sharing their interest in using the HARMONIZE digital toolkits. During the conference, Dr Barcellos also launched the book ‘Climate change, disasters and health’, summarising studies of past extreme events and their health impact, including vector-borne disease outbreaks and monitoring proposals for adaptation policies. 

Dr Codeço, who leads the InfoDengue alert system in Brazil, shared a set of indices for monitoring the health and environment in the Amazon region. This system, recently published in Nature Scientific Data, aligns with the HARMONIZE goals and can give the Consortium initial insights for indices to consider and reproduce in the HARMONIZE Amazon toolkit. Using the same database and indices, Dr Rorato presented a study investigating how economic development trajectories affect the environment and infectious disease dynamics in the region. This approach proposes a more integrated and consistent narrative to describe the scenarios that impact the ecosystem of the Amazon and the health of the community living in the region.

The next MedTrop conference will be hosted in Salvador, Bahia, from the 10th to the 13th of September 2023. The main topic will be “Challenges for Tropical Medicine in the 21st Century. How to face them?”, which matches HARMONIZE’s motivation to provide data toolkits as a mitigation action to tackle climate-sensitive diseases.