The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Climate Change and Health Initiative (NIH CCHI) launched a new website to support the growing need for transdisciplinary research to address health risks related to climate change. The main purpose of the website, and the three-years-young initiative, is to provide health, climate, and community engagement experts with easy access to funding opportunities, the latest scientific findings, news and events, and capacity building materials so they can work together at the critical intersection of climate change and human health.

“The launch of the new website is an exciting step forward,” said Gwen Collman, Ph.D., who helps lead the NIH-wide initiative and directs the Scientific Coordination, Planning, and Evaluation at NIEHS. “We hope this will serve as a rich hub of information that empowers researchers across scientific disciplines to tackle the complex health challenges posed by warming temperatures, shifting weather patterns, and the disasters that follow, like floods, wildfires, and the spread of insects carrying disease.”

The new NIH CCHI website highlights the following funding opportunities, tools, and resources that have been curated to enhance the research efforts of climate and health scientists.

Funding opportunities

A primary goal of the NIH CCHI is to bring together the research community and support innovative scientific research on the health consequences of climate change. To eliminate barriers and promote evolving science, the CCHI website hosts a full list of funding opportunities for climate and health research. Through this database, interested scientists can review open and closed funding announcements from NIH and partner organizations.

“The NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative serves as a blueprint for promoting groundbreaking research to address pressing global challenges,” said NIEHS Director Rick Woychik, Ph.D. “I invite and encourage researchers across scientific disciplines to explore the website, engage with the content, and leverage these resources to help understand the health consequences of a changing climate.”

Explore tools and resources

The CCHI website facilitates access to resources and tools to support the training and capacity building needs of the growing climate change and human health research community.

Don’t miss the Climate Change and Human Health Glossary. Developed to facilitate standardized language and encourage clear communication among scientists, policymakers, advocates, and other key stakeholders, this glossary describes the vocabulary of the science of climate change and its impacts on human health.

Another resource, the Climate and Health Outcomes Research Data Systems (CHORDS), provides a suite of cyberinfrastructure capabilities intended to aid researchers conducting patient-centered outcomes research on climate change and health. CHORDS recently launched a new website that houses a catalog to aid researchers in finding useful data sets, a suite of software tools for accessing and working with geospatial data, and a set of tutorials for working with climate change and health data. Future releases will include standardized geospatial data sets for researchers to use, and use case write-ups to aid researchers in integrating climate change and health data sets.

In addition, the CCHI website highlights the Rapid Acquisition of Pre- and Post-Incident Disaster Data (RAPIDD) Protocol Designer, which is a repository of databases, literature, and standard operating procedures for commonly collected biospecimen and environmental samples. Along with this repository, there is also a protocol builder that can be leveraged by scientists to develop a research protocol uniquely designed to meet the scope of their research in the immediate aftermath of natural or human-made disasters.

Users can also access the Climate Change and Human Health Literature Portal, a comprehensive online bibliographic database of global peer-reviewed research and gray literature on the science of climate impacts on human health. Researchers can filter search results to be defined based on a variety of criteria, including exposure types, geographic features, health impact, model timescale, and more. A portal instructional video offers tips for using the tool.

Building a community of practice

The new CCHI website hosts information about the CAFÉ Research Coordinating Center (RCC). The project aims to Convene, Accelerate, Foster, and Expand the global climate change and health Community of Practice through the sharing of resources and tools, collaborative projects, mentorship opportunities, and monitoring evolving science within key research areas. The NIH CCHI is committed to developing a global community of practice that enables information sharing and network building among those engaged or interested in the climate and health space. Visitors to the CCHI website can find details about how to get involved with the community of practice, find CAFÉ funding opportunities, and subscribe to the CAFÉ newsletter.

Read more about the CAFÉ RCC in this Factor story.

Climate and Health Scholars Program

To foster information sharing in this emerging area of scientific research, the CCHI website features recordings of the CCHI Seminar Series, which includes presentations from NIH Climate Change and Health Scholars.

Every year, the CCHI selects a group of scientists representing a range of scientific expertise from outside the federal government to participate in the NIH Climate and Health Scholars Program. A primary goal of this competitive program is to strengthen the climate and health knowledge of researchers at the various Institutes, Centers, and Offices across NIH.

To learn more, visit: https://climateandhealth.nih.gov