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 because of human actions, sea level are rising, extreme weather events becoming more severe and more frequent, and droughts and heatwaves are intensifying. 

Each of these climate impacts has the potential for significant consequences for human health. 

• The health of millions of people will be negatively affected by increased temperatures
• Infectious diseases carried by vectors such as mosquitoes will spread faster and further 
• It will be increasingly hard to grow the food we need to live healthily.

Many of us are already experiencing some of these effects. While nowhere is immune, the impacts will not be experienced equally around the world with some of the most vulnerable countries likely to be most severely affected. 

The climate crisis is a health crisis, and we need a global strategy for urgent action. But there are significant gaps in our knowledge of how to limit the effects of climate change on health and how to protect the health of those already suffering from climate change. 

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

To help fill knowledge gaps, we will support better, faster and more equitable ways to collect and share information about the effect of climate change 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 funding streams will support the generation of new evidence. This will enable local policy stakeholders and decision makers to understand the scale of the impact of climate change on health and identify evidence-based locally relevant solutions. 

Wellcome also funds discovery research into a range of disciplines, including climate and health. The knowledge and tools generated from this research will contribute to solving this health challenge, as well as transforming our 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 climate change pose to our health. We’ve gained many valuable insights that have helped to inform our work in the Climate & Health challenge area.

Find out more about the grants we awarded.