Climate and Health

Climate change is likely to be the greatest threat to human health this century, and yet is not commonly thought of as a health issue. 

As the world warms, sea levels rise, extreme weather gets more severe, and droughts and heatwaves intensify. 
Each of these climate impacts has specific and serious consequences for human health. 

• Millions of lives will be lost 
• Infectious diseases will spread faster and further 
• People will have less to eat to stay healthy 

Many of us are already experiencing some of these effects, and while nowhere is immune, the impacts will not be experienced equally around the world. 

Climate change is a health crisis, and we need a global strategy for urgent action. But there are significant gaps in our knowledge of how to prevent further changes in our climate and how to limit the effects of climate change when and where they occur.  

Working with the communities most affected, Wellcome will support the use of evidence and science-based solutions in taking on this urgent health challenge.  

To help fill knowledge gaps, we’re supporting better and faster ways to collect and share information about climate change’s impact on health, at national and regional levels. 

In October 2021, Wellcome pledged up to a further £75 million to accelerate climate and health research. A mixture of directed funding and one-off open calls will generate practical evidence that decision makers in different countries can understand and use to act on climate change. 

Wellcome also funds discovery research into a broad range of disciplines, including infectious disease, population health and genomics. Insights and tools from this research will contribute to solving this health challenge, as well as increasing broader understanding of life, health and wellbeing.  

To help deliver our vision across three key health challenges, we support research through a combination of open calls and direct funding approaches.  

We work with and fund a diverse group of people who can bring innovative and creative insights to these urgent health challenges. 

This page will be updated regularly with the latest climate and health funding information and the opportunities we have available for discovery research.

Since 2015, we've supported a global community of researchers who are taking on the challenges that food systems, increasing urbanisation and climate change pose to our health. We’ve gained many valuable insights that will help to inform our future climate and health work.  

Find out more about the grants we awarded.