This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 55-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions.
Working together in this Collaborative Research Action, the partner agencies have provided support to foster global transdisciplinary research teams of natural (including climate), health and social scientists and stakeholders from across the globe to improve understanding of climate, environment and health pathways to protect and promote health. The projects will provide crucial new understanding into the health implications arising from the impacts of climate change and variability on; 1) the quality/quantity of food, 2) chronic exposure to increases/changes in heat and humidity and 3) changes in the distribution and incidence of a range of infectious diseases and emergence of novel pathogens. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries to increase our knowledge of the complex linkages and pathways between the climate, environment and health to help solve complex challenges that face societies.
The project seeks to understand the effects of extreme heat on chronic kidney disease, which currently affects millions of workers in Latin America and Asia. Strenuous work in extreme heat is considered a main driver and workers in the sugarcane sector of industrial agriculture industry are the most affected. Future projections of climate in many areas of Latin America and Asia show increasing temperatures and aridity, with many projections indicating that extreme heat events and droughts will occur in these regions. Treatment for chronic kidney disease is expensive, resulting in early death for many of those affected. Without prevention, this epidemic is likely to accelerate due increasing temperatures and extreme heat. This project will develop a response and prevention strategy for an industrial sugary cane mill in Nicaragua. The project will seek to assess the immediate and long-term impact the strategy has on workforce health and productivity, the economic and social impacts on those affected by the disease, as well as community resilience and the economic burden on health systems. The project will benefit a broad range of local and national-level stakeholders, including local communities, government, health service agencies, and local and national decision-makers.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
