Impact Funding Resources
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 on physical and mental health visible to drive urgent climate policy action at scale. We will fund transdisciplinary teams to deliver short-term, high-impact projects that maximise policy outcomes by combining evidence generation with influencing and engagement strategies.
The aim of this scheme is to make the impacts of climate change on physical and mental health visible to drive urgent climate policy action at scale. We will fund transdisciplinary teams to deliver short-term, high-impact projects that maximise policy outcomes by combining evidence generation with influencing and engagement strategies.
Start Date06 Feb 2025 End Date30 Apr 2025 Funding AmountUpto GBP 2.5mn Funding Resource TypeResearch Grant
Funding ProviderWellcome
Research Grant
Wellcome
The aim of this scheme is to make the impacts of climate change on physical and mental health visible to drive urgent climate policy action at scale. We will fund transdisciplinary teams to deliver short-term, high-impact projects that maximise policy outcomes by combining evidence generation with influencing and engagement strategies.
The administering organisation can be based anywhere in the world apart from mainland China. It must be able to sign up to Wellcome’s grant conditions.
The administering organisation can be a:
• higher education institution
• research institute
• non-academic healthcare organisation
• not-for-profit or non-governmental organisation
Commercial organisations are not eligible to apply as administering organisation for this call. However, co-applicants and collaborators can be based at commercial organisations.
Is your research right for this scheme?
• We are looking for proposals that generate context-specific evidence using community knowledge and experiences to deliver actionable policy outcomes that can be scaled to multiple settings.
• We will prioritise funding for research that involves and serves the needs of communities most impacted by the health effects of climate change. We will also prioritise projects that advance stories and narratives that tend to be absent in the media or underrepresented in public discourse. This will include generating and/or synthesising relevant data and insights (including across multiple sites or countries) on significant health issues arising from climate impacts.
We will support proposals that:
• Invest in research: Teams must identify an evidence gap that can be filled within a short time frame (for example, 12-18 months within the project duration) by generating and/or synthesising data and insights on the context-specific environmentally mediated health effects of climate change.
• Influence change: Teams must be able to articulate a clear theory of change and strong understanding of policy levers. There must be a policy opportunity that can be targeted within the 3-year timeline. They must demonstrate the demand driving the research, the pull-factors in the policy opportunity targeted, the policy implications of the proposed set of activities and how these can be achieved within the timeframe of the award. They must also show how their research design is innovative and will lead to the desired impact, supporting meaningful and sustainable climate and health action.
• Engage people: Meaningfully engage relevant stakeholders and communities from the outset. This should be reflected in the composition of the team as well as the design of the research proposal and communication strategy. Wellcome supports the use of an engaged research approach. This approach asks researchers to include engagement in the design of their project, while being inclusive of a range of stakeholders.
For this award, relevant stakeholders and communities could include:
• local or national governments
• civil society and community-based organisations
• international or multilateral organisations
• private sector or legal sector
We strongly urge providing letters of support for any stakeholder involved in the project, especially if working with Indigenous and/or impacted communities.
• A wide range of approaches are acceptable if these achieve the objectives of the award. We expect co-applicants with a diversity of expertise to be included in the application.
• While not a requirement, we are particularly interested in receiving proposals that:
o include economic analysis within the programme of work
o foster collaborations with private sector partners
o advance understanding of the limits of adaptation to climate change
o advance narratives that support climate change mitigation
o address policies that support worker health
o look at climate risk on multiple time scales
