Deadline: 13-Apr-23

Wellcome has announced the nominations for Climate Impacts Awards: Unlocking urgent climate action by making the health effects of climate change visible.

The aim of this scheme is to make the impacts of climate change visible across a wide range of physical and mental health outcomes in order to drive urgent climate policy and practice change at scale. This scheme will fund transdisciplinary teams to deliver short-term, high-impact projects, combining evidence generation with communications and/or public engagement.

They will prioritise funding for research that serves the expressed needs of at-risk populations and communities with high exposure and vulnerabilities to the health impacts of climate change. In this context, vulnerability may result from the intersection of factors such as geography, socio-economic status, demography, gender, race, ability, ethnicity, co-morbidities and occupation.

What is in and out of scope

• In scope
  • Proposals where the primary focus is on the current or future direct and environmentally mediated physical or mental health outcomes attributable to climate/climate change (see Haines & Ebi 2019 for definitions), making visible the extent of the problem and driving climate action.
• Out of scope
  • Proposals where the primary focus is on:
    • socially mediated health impacts (such as via migration and livelihoods)
    • current or future health impacts attributable to the consequences of climate change action (mitigation or adaptation)
    • current or future health impacts attributable to the drivers of climate change (for example, fossil fuel emissions).
    • Evidence generation and/or synthesis without substantive public engagement and/or communications.
    • Public engagement and/communications without substantive evidence generation and/or synthesis.

This scheme will support proposals that

• Identify a policy and/or practice-relevant evidence gap that can be filled within a short time frame (for example, 12 to 18 months) by generating or synthesising evidence on context-specific direct and environmentally mediated health effects of climate change.
• Examples of evidence gaps include (but are not limited to) current and future climate impacts on:
  • Mental health of young people in small island developing state(s)
  • Heat-related morbidity and mortality associated with non-communicable diseases and housing type
  • Health-related impacts of flooding in informal settlements in coastal megacities that indicate the limits of adaptation
  • Nutritional status of infants in El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-affected regions in a changing climate
  • Non-communicable diseases of outdoor workers in drought-prone areas
• Have potential to change policy and practice at scale for at-risk populations and communities.
  • Examples include (but are not limited to) evidence that informs/stimulates:
    • Health integration into national or city wide adaptation or net-zero plans
    • Development of sector-specific practice or regulatory guidelines that can protect health, for example, health-centric approaches to climate risk-based finance or net zero, resilient building code that protects health
    • Win-win policy and/or practice opportunities that improve health while reducing climate risk. For example action which improves health, reduces climate risk and creates economic opportunity.
• Involve one or more stakeholders with the motivation and power to drive urgent innovation and action while engaging with at-risk communities to help frame and deliver the project.
  • Examples of stakeholders include:
    • Local or national governments
    • Civil society and community-based organisations
    • International or multilateral organisations
    • Private sector
• Use public engagement and communication expertise to understand the lived experience of health impacts and build support for policies and practices that reduce or reverse those impacts.
  • Examples of formats/media include:
    • Community involvement in analysing and interpreting research findings
    • Amplifying the voice of impacted communities within policy and public debate
    • Partnerships with media (any channel of communication) or social media
    • Partnerships with relevant health or climate campaigning or advocacy organisations
    • Public engagement online or at in-person events

Funding Information

• Level of funding: Up to £2.5 million. In exceptional cases they may award this.
• Duration of funding: Up to 3 years.

What they offer

• Funding level, duration of award, costs and research expenses
  • staff
  • continuing professional development and training
  • materials and consumables
  • animals
  • equipment
  • access charges
  • overheads
  • travel and subsistence
  • overseas allowances
  • fieldwork expenses
  • inflation allowance
  • open access charges
  • clinical research costs
  • public engagement and patient involvement costs
  • contract research organisations
  • other costs.

Eligibility Criteria

• You can apply for this award if you are a team leader who wants to advance transdisciplinary research on the impacts of climate change on health.
• You will be expected to:
  • have prior experience of research engaging with policy/practitioners/implementation partners
  • have knowledge brokering competencies such as the ability to act as a bridge between research teams and impacted communities
  • actively promote a diverse, inclusive, and supportive environment within your team and across your organisation.
  • Your research team can include researchers from any discipline (natural, physical and social sciences as well as technology) but must be transdisciplinary (see the definition of transdisciplinary from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development here), and include expertise in public engagement and communications.
• During your award they expect you to:
  • identify an important policy and/or practice evidence gap where the case can be made that evidence generation or synthesis could help drive urgent action
  • create a transdisciplinary team involving researchers, policy makers, communicators, and other stakeholders with a history of engagement with at-risk populations and communities
  • co-develop and co-produce the necessary evidence to fill the identified gap with the involvement of impacted populations and communities
  • deliver public engagement that embeds at-risk populations and communities within the research life cycle
  • communicate the evidence to the target audience
  • provide recommendations for potential solutions.
  • The award will be held by a team of researchers led by an established team leader from an eligible administering institution.
• Lead Applicant
  • At the time of submission:
    • Must have experience in leading transdisciplinary research-communication activities that deliver policy and/or practice actions that serve the expressed needs of populations and communities at-risk of the health impacts of climate change.
    • Must be able to demonstrate that they have a permanent, open-ended, or long-term rolling contract for the duration of the award.
    • Must be able to contribute at least 20% of their time to this project.
    • Must be based at an eligible administering organisation that can sign up to their grant conditions.
    • Administering organisation and team institutions
    • You must be based at an eligible administering organisation that can sign up to their grant conditions (it can be based in any country apart from mainland China). The project must have a team leader or coapplicant based in all countries where the research activities are taking place.
  • Eligible administering organisations for the proposal and team member institutions can be:
    • academic institutions
    • non-governmental
    • civil society
    • international and multilateral organisations
    • private sector organizations
    • local or national government.
    • Administering organisations must be able to meet Wellcome grant conditions.
• The Team
  • Team members (coapplicants, staff, consultants) must include all the requisite research, public engagement and/or communication skills and capacities to carry out the proposed work including co-producing the project with key local stakeholders serving the expressed needs of the impacted populations and communities at the heart of the proposal.
  • For example, team members could include (but are not limited to) backgrounds in:
    • climate,
    • health,
    • specific sectors,
    • economics,
    • political science,
    • media.
  • Your team or consortia should be able to demonstrate:
    • a strong track record in research on the impacts of climate change on health
    • a strong track record in working with communities most affected by climate change
    • a strong track record of working in collaboration with policymakers, implementers and/or decision makers involved in delivering climate solutions (including finance) in relevant sectors
    • experience designing and planning research projects in collaboration with in-country implementation partners from government, NGOs and/or other relevant institutions and organisations
    • experience designing and delivering communications and/or public engagement activities responsive to the expressed needs, interests and capacities of at-risk communities.
• Coapplicants
  • Can be based anywhere in the world (apart from mainland China).
  • Must be able to contribute at least 20% of their time to this project.
  • Must be essential for delivery of the proposed project and provide added value to the team, for example designing the research, writing the application, providing training, knowledge brokering or managing the programme.
  • Must have a guarantee of space from the administering organisation for the duration of the award.
  • Must be based at an eligible organisation that can sign up to their grant conditions.
  • Must include in-country policy actors and/or practitioners, civil servants, private sector, civil society actors.
  • Do not need to have a permanent, open-ended, or long-term rolling contract at their organisation.
  • Can be at any career stage.
  • Can only be a lead applicant on one application for this scheme. Lead applicants can be included as a coapplicant on one other application, but they must be able to demonstrate that they have sufficient capacity for both projects if funded. Coapplicants can be listed on a maximum of two applications only.
  • Your application can have a maximum of 7 coapplicants.
  • Time spent away from research and part-time working
  • You can apply if you’ve been away from research (for example a career break, maternity leave, or long-term sick leave). They’ll allow for this when they consider your application. Lead and coapplicants can be part-time. There is no formal minimum, but part-time working needs to be compatible with delivering the proposal successfully.
• What’s expected of the administering organisation:
  • You must be based at an eligible organisation that can sign up to their grant conditions and grant funding policies.
  • They expect organisations based in the UK to meet the responsibilities required by the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers for institutions, managers and researchers. Any organisation with Wellcome funding that is based outside the UK is expected, at a minimum, to follow the principles of the Concordat.
• They also expect your administering organisation to:
  • give you, and any staff employed on the grant, at least 10 days a year (pro rata if part-time) to undertake training and continuing professional development (CPD) in line with the Concordat. This should include the responsible conduct of research, research leadership, people management, diversity and inclusion, and the promotion of a healthy research culture.
  • provide a system of onboarding, embedding and planning for you when you start the award.
  • provide you with the status and benefits of other staff of similar seniority.
  • if your administering organisation is a core-funded research organisation, this award should not replace or lead to a reduction in existing or planned core support.

For more information, visit Climate Impacts Awards.