The National Institute of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS), in partnership with Fogarty International Center (FIC), National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), National Heart Blood and Lung Institute (NHBLI) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) is leading an NIH-wide Climate Change and Health Initiative (CCHI) with the goals of: reducing the health threats posed by climate change across the lifespan; improving the health of people who are at increased risk from or disparately affected by climate change impacts; and building health resilience among individuals, communities, Tribal Nations, and nations around the world, thereby increasing health equity. As a part of this CCHI, this NOSI encourages applications that address the impact of climate change on health and well-being over the life course, including the health implications of climate change in the United States and globally.
Climate change poses substantial threats to human health across the life span. These threats influence health concerns including communicable and non-communicable diseases, injuries, hazardous exposures, mental health, and death. Health outcomes can be affected directly by climate change through weather events such as extreme heat, wildfires, droughts, storm surges, and floods, and indirectly through a series of exposure pathways that include air and water quality, food quality, infectious diseases, and population displacement events. Exposure pathways are influenced by environmental contexts related to land use, geography, infrastructure, and agriculture, as well as social, behavioral, and economic contexts that create vulnerabilities associated with life stage, gender, poverty, discrimination, and access to care.
The elevated threats to human health from climate change occur across a wide range of illnesses and injuries, including: asthma, respiratory allergies and airway diseases, cancers, cardiovascular disease and stroke, foodborne diseases and decreased nutrition, heat-related illness and deaths, reproductive, birth outcome, and developmental effects, mental health and neurological disorders, vector borne and zoonotic diseases, waterborne diseases, and extreme weather-related morbidity and mortality. Understanding the health implications – including potential health benefits -- of actions to prevent, mitigate, and adapt to climate change offers opportunities to improve the social and environmental determinants of health, especially for at-risk communities.
As with many health outcomes, populations including children, older adults, women and pregnant women, and persons with disabilities, among others, may be disproportionally at risk. Strong evidence indicates that climate change disproportionately adversely affects communities that experience social , and environmental vulnerabilities. Such communities could include American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian Americans, Blacks/African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders, sexual and gender minorities, socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, underserved rural populations, and those unduly burdened by exposure to environmental pollution. In the United States and globally, structural racism and discrimination contribute to the higher risk from health impacts of climate change.
This list of influences, pathways, and health outcomes is not comprehensive, and the variability of these influences on health creates challenges for attribution to climate change. While the burden of disease attributable to climate change has not yet been reliably estimated, indicators point to a reversal of long-term U.S. and global trends of improvements in population health due to climate change. As the impact of climate change on human health increases, attribution becomes less important than intervention.
The NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative Strategic Framework summarizes the initial planning and development of an NIH-wide research initiative on the impacts of climate change on people’s health. The goal of the NIH-wide Climate Chance and Health Initiative is to support research and training that 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. High priority applications will focus on NIH-priority populations and propose transdisciplinary research that falls broadly into the Core Elements and Supporting Areas of Science outlined in the Strategic Framework.
NOT-ES-22-006
Expiration Date: May 08, 2025