Published: 07 February 2024
The NIHR has awarded over £20 million to eight new global health research projects. The projects aim to help strengthen health service delivery and resilience in low and middle income countries (LMICs). They are focused on healthcare in the context of extreme weather events.
Extreme weather events due to climate change are increasingly common. These include tropical storms, droughts and floods.
The new awards range between £1 million and £3 million over three to five years. They have been made through the NIHR's Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation (RIGHT) programme. The RIGHT programme funds interdisciplinary applied health research in LMICs.
NIHR CEO, Professor Lucy Chappell said: “Climate change is a real threat to health across the globe - driving natural disasters like flooding and drought and disrupting people's access to healthcare in many countries. These new research projects will help find the best ways for healthcare to adapt to extreme weather and ensure that people can still get the care they need."
Professor Chappell attended the recent COP 28 Health Day in December 2023, where she announced the funding for the new projects. On the same day, 124 countries endorsed the Declaration of Climate and Health. This declaration calls for climate action to achieve rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It also calls for a transition to sustainable healthy diets and lower air pollution.
The new research projects align with the World Health Organization’s operational framework for building climate-resilient health systems. The framework identified the need to understand how climate change can affect health.
The eight newly-funded NIHR projects focus on extreme weather challenges across multiple countries. The projects are as follows:
- Improving business continuity for health services following extreme weather events
- Strengthening responsiveness of health services provision to extreme weather events for urban marginalised people
- Improving early warning and control of mosquito-borne disease outbreaks caused by extreme weather in Uganda
- Improving primary healthcare for patients with non-communicable diseases during severe flooding in India
- Encouraging preparedness, planning, community co-design, and protection of Kenya’s health system from the effects of extreme weather
- Achieving Health Service Delivery Resilience During Climate-Induced Disasters among the Most Vulnerable Communities in Mozambique
- Adaptations to strengthen healthcare delivery and resilience to extreme weather events in Southern Africa
- Warning system for Extreme weather events, Awareness Technology for Healthcare, Equitable delivery, and Resilience (WEATHER).
RIGHT 5 funded projects
Improving business continuity for health services following extreme weather events
Professor Paul Hunter and Dr Evanson Z Sambala
£3,020,472
- A joint partnership led by the University of East Anglia and the Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, Malawi which aims to build on key recommendations derived from the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report These include a portfolio of actions to reduce risk; a multi hazard risk management approach; and the importance of integration of local and scientific knowledge within Malawi, Vietnam, Tanzania and Uganda.
Warning system for Extreme weather events, Awareness Technology for Healthcare, Equitable delivery, and Resilience (WEATHER).
Professor Mary Lynch and Professor Saloshni Naidoo
£2,289,516
- A collaborative research partnership between the University of the West of Scotland and the University of KwaZulu-Natal that aims to develop an early warning system for extreme weather such as flooding in two vulnerable districts in South Africa; eThekwini and Ugu districts of KwaZulu-Natal province.
Adaptations to strengthen healthcare delivery and resilience to extreme weather events in Southern Africa (ASTRA)
Professor Collins Iwuji and Professor Salome Charalambous
£3,023,735
- A UK and low and middle income country (LMIC) partnership jointly led by the University of Sussex and The Aurum Institute, South Africa. The four-year project aims to evaluate interventions to strengthen community and health system resilience to extreme weather events on vulnerable populations living with HIV and/or tuberculosis in Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia.
Achieving Health Service Delivery Resilience During Climate-Induced Disasters among the Most Vulnerable Communities in Mozambique
Dr Eduardo Samo Gudo
£1,681,261
- A low and middle income country (LMIC) award led by Instituto Nacional de Saúde (the National Institute of Health), Mozambique which aims to develop an intervention that can reduce health service delivery disruption at the community-level , service-level, and district-level in the most vulnerable communities of two provincial districts in Mozambique.
A Novel Extreme Weather Risk Insurance System for Kenya (NEWRISK): Encouraging preparedness, planning, community co-design, and protection of Kenya’s health system from the effects of extreme weather
Dr Jacob McKnight and Dr Benjamin Tsofa
£3,023,243
- Oxford University will work with Kenyan partners to address this issue by developing high resolution climate models that show how anticipated changes to Kenya’s climate and impacts on the country’s health facilities. The team will map vulnerable populations and survey health facilities in order to determine how extreme weather will impact access to healthcare and the effects that this will have on people living in different areas.
Strengthening responsiveness of health services provision to extreme weather events for urban marginalised people
Dr Rachel Tolhurst and Dr Surekha Garimella
£3,024,761
- A joint-led award between the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the George Institute for Global Health in India which aims to collaboratively design, implement and evaluate context sensitive interventions to improve the preparedness and responsiveness of health service delivery in the context of extreme weather events for urban marginalised people.
Improving early warning and control of mosquito-borne disease outbreaks caused by extreme weather in Uganda
Dr Tarekegn Abeku and Dr Julius Lutwama
£2,749,920
- A UK and low and middle income country (LMIC) partnership between the Malaria Consortium and Uganda Virus Research Institute that aims to improve the health system in Uganda to develop a capacity to forecast impending outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases associated with extreme weather events.
Improving primary healthcare for patients with non-communicable diseases during severe flooding in India
Dr Semira Manaseki-Holland and Dr Panniyammakal Jeemon
£3,021,694
- A five-year research partnership between University of Birmingham and Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, India that aims to co-develop primary care interventions with communities and stakeholders, to improve preparedness and response for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) during flood-disasters in India.