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Climate change news, resources and funding for global health researchers

Global climate change is one of the most pressing environmental and public health concerns of the 21st century. Major human health impacts of climate change are anticipated to occur due to associated changes in the environment, such as direct effects from heat, sea level rise, changes in precipitation resulting in flooding and drought, more intense hurricanes and storms, degraded air quality, and increased exposure to toxic environmental pollutants including persistent organic pollutants, metals and pesticides. A better understanding of how climate change will directly and indirectly alter human health is critical to reduce or prevent illness and death.

The NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative (NIH CCHI) is an urgent, cross-cutting NIH effort to stimulate research to reduce health threats from climate change across the lifespan and build health resilience in individuals, communities, and nations around the world, especially among those at highest risk. Fogarty is one of the founding NIH institutes and centers (ICs) on the partnership, which is being led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

Previously, NIH has studied this issue and in 2010 issued a report, A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change, outlining research needs for eleven categories of consequences of climate change for human health, including asthma and respiratory disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke, foodborne diseases and nutrition, human developmental effects, mental health and stress-related disorders, neurological diseases, vector-borne and zoonotic diseases, waterborne diseases, and weather-related morbidity and mortality. 

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This photo shows an Ethiopian woman standing among cattle who wander disoriented because they can't find water.

Call for applications: Global Forum for Humanitarian Health Research

Fogarty’s Global Forum for Humanitarian Health Research (GFH2R) is holding an in-person meeting on health research at the nexus of humanitarian crises and climate change in Nairobi, Kenya, in May 2025.

Learn more about GFH2R 2025

Call for applications to attend the in-person meeting (Deadline: October 7, 2024)

Watch recording of launch webinar


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Updated: October 4, 2024