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Given that the health-related impacts of climate change in Latin America disproportionately affect the most marginalized sections of the population, there is a need to enhance countries' adaptive capacity through improved health systems. Though public health institutions have delineated guidelines to enhance health care systems' preparedness for climate change, embedding a human rights perspective in their translation into laws and policies further adds important value. Crucially, a rights-based approach strengthens health responses to climate change by calling attention to how climate law and policy fail to account for persistent and interlocking socioeconomic inequalities. This is an area that has not been fully present in the provision of health services in Latin America, which rely almost exclusively on a conventional epidemiological perspective and do not consider the historical and sociocultural nature of health challenges. Hence, this paper draws on two case studies--Brazil and Colombia--to identify the extent to which their national climate change laws and adaptation plans incorporate a human rightsbased approach in their tasks to enhance their adaptive capacity through the expansion of affordable and quality health care. With respect to the countries' laws, the absence of explicit references to the right to health exemplifies the fragmentation between the international human rights framework and international climate change law. Further, both countries' adaptation plans hold considerable room for improving their engagement with the human rights framework, particularly by establishing mechanisms to promote transparency, monitoring, and the participation of marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study discussing the pursuit of divergent extensive reforms of health care systems by Brazil and Colombia, to improve access, increase efficiency and reduce health inequities. It is mentioned that reform do not seems to have had a decisive positive impact on the health outcomes. It is also mentioned that, underfunding, unbridled decentralization and inequitable access to care seem to have been the main constraints.