Awards

Daniel Kwaro of CREATES in Kenya will develop an early warning system for malaria outbreaks, floods, and heatwaves in Siaya County in Kenya, co-designing it with the local community. They will incorporate health and demographic surveillance system data, including a specific focus on maternal health indicators and birth outcomes, as well as data from automated weather stations, wearable devices, and mosquito traps. Through secondary data analyses, they will assess the probability and consequences of climate-related hazards, including identifying vulnerable communities, high-risk geographical areas, and occurrence patterns of climate-sensitive diseases. They will actively involve Siaya County residents, healthcare providers, and relevant local authorities in co-designing the early warning system paired with multiple mechanisms for communication to ensure the system is accessible and effective in responding to local needs.

Aline Rocha of Fiocruz in Brazil will link datasets through the Center for Data Integration and Knowledge in Health (CIDACS) to measure the impact of extreme climate events on maternal and infant nutritional outcomes across diverse ecological settings and population groups in Brazil. They will integrate longitudinal data from two datasets, the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort and the Climate and Health Data Platform, connecting them through the municipality where mothers reside. The cohort database links data from social protection programs to administrative and health databases to assess the social determinants of health. The data platform extracts and links climate and environmental data from the year 2000 onwards from existing open-source databases. The integration of these two datasets will guide evidence-based programs to enhance the resilience of health services and mitigate the effects of climate change on maternal and child health, particularly for those most vulnerable.

This grant is funded by Grand Challenges Brazil.

Livia Casseb of Evandro Chagas Institute in Brazil will develop models to understand and predict the impact of climate change on the Aedes mosquito-transmitted arboviral diseases dengue, chikungunya, and Zika in Brazil. The models will integrate a variety of existing data for the different geographic regions of Brazil, including historical data on climate, landscape characteristics, population density, mosquito distribution, and public health. They will also incorporate structured and unstructured data from community networks, teaching and research institutions, and state government entities. The models will reveal interdependent relationships and interactions, including spatial correlations between the arboviral diseases over time. They will develop distinct models for individual geographic regions to serve as early warning systems for arboviral disease outbreaks and to guide local interventions.

This grant is funded by Grand Challenges Brazil.

Hernan Argibay of Fiocruz in Brazil will support a participatory research approach for communities in urban slums in Salvador, Brazil to develop and monitor the impact of interventions to reduce the risk of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. Guided by local needs, new community-led projects will focus on environmentally transmitted diseases (e.g., leptospirosis and enteric infections) and vector-borne diseases (e.g., leishmaniasis, rickettsiosis, and those caused by the arboviruses dengue, chikungunya, and Zika), all of whom could increase in incidence due to climate change. Intervention projects will include environmental clean-up to reduce disease transmission by mosquitos and rats, planting to improve drainage and provide additional food sources, and using an app to map potential risk factors and guide new projects. They will measure intervention impact, including community-led pathogen surveillance using vector traps, water sampling, and metagenomic sequencing.

This grant is funded by Grand Challenges Brazil.

Andréia Santo of the Associação Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré in Brazil will collect temperature, humidity, and air quality data together with associated health data for residents in the Maré favelas in Rio de Janeiro to better understand the causes of respiratory diseases and reduce their burden. They will also train high school girls as citizen scientists to work alongside health professionals in collecting and analyzing data and developing practical technologies to mitigate the health effects of heat and poor air quality. This participatory science approach will serve as a sustainable mechanism to understand the impacts of climate change on the health of particularly vulnerable communities in Brazil and to guide the development of innovative solutions. In selected residences in Maré, they will pilot an intervention consisting of a bio-concrete wall coating to reduce indoor relative humidity as a cause of heat stress for occupants.

This grant is funded by Grand Challenges Brazil.

Roman Thibeaux of the Institut Pasteur de Nouvelle Calédonie in New Caledonia will examine how climate-driven soil changes and societal and behavioral factors can affect the incidence of leptospirosis to develop community-centered prevention strategies. The causal agent of the disease is the bacterium Leptospira, which can be found in water or soil contaminated with the urine of infected animals and thus can spread following heavy rainfall. Leptospirosis is endemic in the New Caledonia archipelago in the South Pacific, with potential climate-driven increases in incidence. Using soil microcosms in the laboratory, they will explore the effects of temperature, rainfall, and soil structure on Leptospira survival and dispersion. Through interviews and focus groups with New Caledonia community members together with ethnographic fieldwork, they will record local perceptions and knowledge relevant to leptospirosis and its transmission. In partnership with local community members and health authorities, they will then identify sustainable strategies to reduce leptospirosis incidence.

This grant is funded by the Pasteur Network.

Monika Shukla of Buzzworthy Ventures Private Limited in India will establish a women-led beekeeping network in India to enhance crop yields through bee pollination and improve women's livelihoods. The network will be established initially in one climate zone with a known array of crops. They will educate women about bee pollination for agriculture and provide hands-on training in scientific methods of beekeeping. They will provide multiple types of support for the network, including guidance on integrating weather information to determine optimal times for harvesting honey and deploying bees for pollination, advice on running a beekeeping business, and access to an AI-based app for advice on beehive management. They will also create a community center serving the network with educational programs and as a central site for warehousing honey and processing hive products.

Provat Saha of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Bangladesh will support women-led, rural agricultural microenterprises in Bangladesh in deploying a set of climate-smart technologies to enhance their productivity and resilience to climate change. They will engage microenterprises distributed across three sectors: vegetable cultivation, fish farming, and poultry production. They will provide each with a system for user-friendly access to weather forecasts based on international weather models. Each will also receive a cost-effective system for real-time weather monitoring, consisting of a micro-weather station along with relevant sensors, such as soil moisture meters for crops, dissolved oxygen sensors for fisheries, and ammonia and light-intensity sensors for poultry farms. They will provide technical training and guidelines on using the technologies to improve farming decisions, and they will monitor outcomes, including reductions in time, labor, and costs.

Rashima Kazal of the Association of Voluntary Actions for Society in Bangladesh will support women smallholder farmers in the southern and southwestern coastal areas of Bangladesh to improve their livelihoods and enhance their resilience to climate change. They will form and strengthen self-help groups of women farmers, providing seed money to scale-up new ideas they generate on topics such as labor-saving technologies, climate-smart tools, and digital marketing. They will provide training for the groups, including on managing livestock, preventing crop failure, and ensuring family nutrition through low-cost, short-term agricultural production and through food processing techniques that enable year-round nutrition. They will also facilitate communication between rural women's groups and relevant government ministries, committees, and policymakers, so that the perspectives of rural women farmers can be integrated into climate adaptation policies and decisions.

David Chiawo of Strathmore University in Kenya will develop an integrated approach that empowers women smallholder farmers in the Mount Kenya region to improve their livelihoods and adapt to climate change. The approach combines avocado cultivation, beekeeping for honey production, and bean farming. This integration will help women farmers optimize their limited land resources and diversify their income sources, with nitrogen fixation by beans improving soil fertility and increased pollination of avocado trees enhancing yield. The approach includes technology for digital tracking of avocados from farm to market, supporting product traceability and consumer trust to increase attractiveness for the export market. They will also establish a women-led aggregator system for farmers to pool their produce, negotiate better prices, and access larger markets more efficiently.