The first in-person HARMONIZE meeting took place from 2nd to 4th May 2023 at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, marking one year since the project launched. Both internal team members and external collaborators were invited to attend, with participants joining from Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Peru, Spain and Uruguay. This landmark meeting focused on three main goals: (i) to better characterise the needs and perspectives of decision-makers and users of health and environmental data; (ii) to share the main developments of the HARMONIZE project to date and gather feedback from invited attendees; and (iii) to determine project priorities for the next 12 months.

On day one, the main focus was to familiarise external collaborators with HARMONIZE and to learn more about how professionals from across the climate and health spectrum at local, national and international scales engage with, use and produce data. This culminated in an introductory presentation from the HARMONIZE consortium outlining the project aims, objectives and deliverables, followed by ice-breaker activity and a series of presentations from 10 speakers from the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM, Colombia), the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE, Colombia), Institute of National Health (INS, Colombia), Public Health Laboratory of Tolima (Colombia), National Ministry of Health (Colombia), National Ministry of Health (Dominican Republic), Loreto Secretary of Health (Peru), National Ministry of Health (Brazil) and the Inter-American Institute (IAI, Uruguay).

For the morning of day two, additional presentations were given from HARMONIZE consortium members representing each of the different hotspots and activities being undertaken by collaborating institutions, followed by an extensive question and answer session to gather feedback and concerns from invited attendees. In the afternoon, the activities focused on getting to know the types of users the portal will serve, exploring the users’ general contexts, principal needs and challenges in accessing climate and health data via a persona creation workshop. This workshop centred around five key personas - regional decision-makers, local decision-makers, users and technicians, Brazilian partners and HARMONIZE lead members - to address the following three questions: (i) ‘Can you describe the different activities you are involved in regarding health or climate information?’, (ii) ‘What are the main goals regarding your experience working with health or climate information?’, (iii) ‘What are the main challenges regarding your experience working with health or climate information?’. In addition, the activities defined principal processes in the different users' day-to-day activities where climate and health data add value to their decision-making. These in-depth discussions and plenaries were captured to inform future planning of HARMONIZE activities and development.

On day three, only internal HARMONIZE consortium members were required to attend to discuss specific project deliverables, such as the HARMONIZE portal, and better define the products being developed. The portal is essential for disseminating between the different types of users. The team created a first draft of the information architecture in which the users can access the toolkits and the rest of the products. Further, the team decided to create different dissemination and training materials, videos and images to share via the portal.

Overall, the first in-person meeting was highly successful, gaining valuable insights and feedback from a diverse range of climate and health professionals across the Latin America and Caribbean region. During the first year of the project, internal research has been conducted to map user profiles and needs independently. Thus, validating these insights with external collaborators was critical to ensuring that HARMONIZE users were well-defined. This has enabled the team to strengthen user-profiles and product designs to better suit the needs of the people that HARMONIZE intends to serve.

The HARMONIZE team during the first Annual Meeting in Colombia