The global climate is changing, with numerous and complex implications for health. Yet, many of the health threats of climate change are poorly understood and remain on the margins of the global climate discourse. In recognition of this, the Duke Global Health Institute has launched the Climate and Global Health Initiative to advance understanding of climate-health impacts while prioritizing health equity and environmental justice. The Initiative functions as an interdisciplinary hub, bringing together experts from health, life, social, physical, and human sciences to accelerate research and action. Through this collaborative approach, the Initiative seeks to expand climate-health knowledge; develop and deploy evidence-based adaptation and mitigation strategies; influence policymaking; and develop the next generation of climate-health leaders equipped to address these challenges.

A central objective of the Climate and Global Health Initiative is to form regional climate and health observatories. The observatories are envisioned as evolving, interdisciplinary spaces that convene researchers and practitioners with place-based expertise in public health, data science, epidemiology, climate change, environment, and policy. Regional climate and health observatories will be located in North Carolina, the Amazon Basin, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. These observatory locations leverage established partnerships and collaborations between Duke faculty and local partners and are also regions and communities with significant vulnerability to health effects of climate change. Within each observatory, the Initiative will catalyze and facilitate research, support development of educational programming, and build collaborative interdisciplinary networks focused on climate and health. To amplify impact, the Initiative will support cross-site scientific collaboration to ensure knowledge-sharing and accelerate research that informs health-protective adaptation and mitigation efforts.

A secondary objective of the Climate and Global Health Initiative is to build robust data management and sharing infrastructure to house climate-health relevant datasets and facilitate reproducible research. This infrastructure will use best practices and processes for data storage, governance, and use to develop a rich resource for researchers, learners, and communities of practice within and across the climate and health observatories.

The Initiative will additionally prepare researchers, practitioners, and learners for climate and global health-related work through teaching climate change and health courses, developing targeted educational resources, and facilitating connections to translational research and policy-engagement resources at Duke. This will ensure that investments are relevant to partners outside of academia and supports effective communication of key research findings that help protect health and inform policymaking around climate change and global health.

The Climate and Global Health Initiative strives to develop partnership with interdisciplinary research groups interested in addressing the health impacts of climate change. Our aim through these partnerships is to stimulate new research collaborations, develop and disseminate targeted training materials and opportunities, and/or generate primary data in the service of future funding proposals.

Funding calls will be released periodically. We further invite you to reach out with ideas and requests that align with the mission of the initiative.
 

Climate+ Project: Climate Change is Fueling Fungal Threats Globally

Drs. Thuy Le and Tom Carpino from the Duke School of Medicine and Duke Global Health Institute are partnering with a group of investigators from the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania, to investigate how real-world climate factors impact trends in invasive fungal infection burden over time in Tanzania. This project offers students interested in global health or data science hands-on training in the use of statistical modeling and data science tools (Python, R) and a team science approach at the intersection of data science, climate, and global health, while contributing evidence that may inform public health policy in resource-limited settings.

More information on this project, along with applications for students interested in participating, can be found here: https://bigdata.duke.edu/participate/climate-plus/

Contact: Tom Carpino
 

TriCEM: EMSI

The Climate and Global Health Initiative is partnering with the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine (TriCEM) to run their annual Evolutionary Medicine Summer Institute (EMSI) in May 2026. This workshop will focus on Climate Change and Health. We anticipate participation from 25 to 30 graduate students from around the world, with a focus on lectures, field skills, computational methods, and team science.  At the workshop, participants and instructors will also work collaboratively to develop a "structured toolkit” aimed at investigating climate change and health in five small-scale agricultural populations around the world, including two sites that are connected to DGHI. In the year after the workshop, teams will travel to these sites to collect data and fine-tune the toolkit before launching it more generally. We are also involving trainees from the international sites in the workshop.

We seek involvement from the DGHI community. Please reach out to Charlie Nunn if you are interested in participating as an instructor at the workshop (faculty and postdocs), or if you run a field site and are interested in supporting the implementation phase in 2026-27 at your field site.

Contact: Charlie Nunn

The Climate and Health Initiative draws on a broad range of expertise from Duke’s campus and globally. See listed below key Initiative faculty and staff. 

Interested in learning more about what is happening in climate and global health at Duke? Check back here for updates and event announcements or contact our research program leader directly with any questions or comments about the initiative and its work: emily.robie@duke.edu