NIH awards help broaden climate change research
September / October 2022 | Volume 21 Number 5
Photo courtesy of USAID in AfricaA woman stands with her daughter in the dried-out basin of a former watering hole in Ethiopia. New NIH funding expands the study of the effects of climate change on health.
Scientists internationally agree that climate change threatens human health; the complexity of its impact is enormous. In an effort to include new researchers from multiple disciplines in climate change and health (CCH) research from both the U.S. and low- and middle-income countries, NIH has awarded supplemental funds to fourteen Fogarty projects.
“The challenge of tackling climate change and its health implications is substantial, urgent, and complex," said Fogarty Director Dr. Roger I. Glass. “These studies into how climate change impacts human health will be the catalyst to work that will impact any and everybody around the globe."
The supplements are part of the
NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative, an urgent, cross-cutting NIH effort chaired by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and led by an Executive Committee comprising the Directors of six other NIH Institutes and Centers, including Fogarty. The multi-IC lead initiative aims to reduce health threats from climate change across the lifespan and build health resilience in individuals, communities, and nations worldwide, especially among those with the highest risk. The additional funds will allow grants not currently focused on CCH to add relevant metrics to their existing studies and cohorts. The mechanism will also allow those grants already centered around CCH to expand their activities to new populations, modeling activities, exposure measurements, and health outcomes.
These supplements to Fogarty grantees, some of which were funded by the NIH Office of the Director (OD), Office of Research on Women's Health, and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, address a broad range of topics. From its impact on land use in places like Peru, which has led to an uptick in snakebites, and Madagascar, where the spread of disease has been altered, to its effects on road safety in Ghana, there is almost no area of research that climate change does not influence.
All of the projects address at least one of the CCH initiative's core pillars—health effects research, health equity, intervention research, and training and capacity building—or one of the priority areas of science identified by the initiative, which include behavioral and social science research, disaster research response, and adaptation research. Additional supplements were supported by OD to grants from NIDCD, NIMHD, NINR and NLM.
Grant supplements to expand climate change and health research
- Institution: Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru
Project:
Adverse effects of climate change on air pollution, aeroallergen exposures, and asthma symptoms
PI(s): Stella Maria Hartinger, William Checkley - Institution: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Project:
International Training in Environmental Health over the Lifespan
PI(s): Luz Claudio - Institution: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
Project:
Understanding the Effect of Climate Change on Road Safety in Ghana
PI(s): Peter Donkor, Charles N. Mock - Institution: Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria
Project:
Role of Data Streams in Informing Infection Dynamics in Africa (INFORM Africa)
PI(s): Alash'le G. Abimiku, Chenfeng Xiong - Institution: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Peru
Project:
The Ethics, Climate Change, and Health Mentorship Project
PI(s): Florencia Luna - Institution: Baylor College of Medicine
Project:
Siyakhula: Growing HIV/TB Research Knowledge for Growing Healthy Kids in Eswatini
PI(s): Anna Mandalakas - Institution: Mutasa Biomedical Research and Training Institute
Project:
Advanced Training in Community Based Research; training in Bio-informatics, Drug Resistance, and Pathogenesis
PI(s): Shungu Munyati - Institution: Rhode Island Hospital
Project:
Development of a Mobile Health Personalized Physiologic Analytics Tool for Pediatric Patients with Sepsis
PI(s): Adam Carl Levine - Institution: University of Iowa
Project:
Statistical and agent-based modeling of complex microbial systems: a means for understanding enteric disease transmission among children in urban neighborhoods of Kenya
PI(s): Kelly Baker, Daniel Sewell - Institution: Duke University
Project:
Impact of climate change and land use on snakebite envenoming in the Brazilian Amazon
PI(s): Charles John Gerardo - Institution: Duke University
Project:
The Impact of Land Use Change on Transmission Potential Networks and Disease Spread in Rural Madagascar
PI(s): Charles Nunn - Institution: University of Ibadan College of Medicine
Project:
Hybrid E-zine Health Education intervention integrated within a Mental Health package for Adolescent Perinatal Depression (E-zineMH)
PI(s): Lola Kola - Institution: University of Nairobi
Project:
Mapping impact and developing mitigation strategies for climate change-mental health nexus in the context of vulnerable adolescent populations in Kenya
PI(s): Manasi Kumar - Institution: University of California Los Angeles
Project: Buddhism and HIV Stigma in Thailand: An Intervention Study
PI(s): Wei-Ti Chen
More Information
Updated October 12, 2022
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