# Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research on Climate, Health and Equity in a Changing Environment (C-CHANGE)

> **NIH NIH P20** · CORNELL UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $1,303,195

## Abstract

Some of the greatest human health impacts from climate change are mediated by infectious diseases. Billions
are at risk annually from malaria alone, and viral pathogen spillover events and spread of vector-borne diseases
(VBD) are increasing due to climate change. In response to these urgent threats, Cornell University and the
University of Pretoria have newly partnered to create the Center for Transformative Infectious Disease
Research on Climate, Health and Equity in a Changing Environment (C-CHANGE). To have the greatest
health impacts, we must change research and practice paradigms from reactive focus on response to outbreaks
to proactive understanding of the complex social and environmental determinants that promote risk of outbreaks.
We hypothesize that community-engaged research integrating human, reservoir and vector behavior, climate,
land-use, human and animal health, and vector/pathogen genomic evolution datasets, will enable creation of
predictive epidemiological models and future generation and rigorous testing of preventative interventions.
Improved understanding of these relationships will also facilitate current preparation/response. Working toward
these goals, we integrate dimensions of building research capacity and performing transdisciplinary research in
every element of C-CHANGE. Administrative Core (Travis, Oosthuizen, co-PIs): will facilitate routine meetings;
administer a pilot grant competition with preference for Early Stage Investigators (ESI) to generate preliminary
data and test feasibility for future studies; and organize transdisciplinary training for ESIs, post-doctoral and
graduate student trainees to broaden their skills and network for future climate change and health research.
Living Evidence Applied Data Modeling Core (Hayden-ESI; Smith-ESI; Marivate-ESI, co-leads): will federate
current datasets from 4 continents and provide transdisciplinary modeling expertise to enable researchers to
integrate climate, land-use, animal and human health, and genomic data to help identify generalizable vs context-
specific relationships. Community Engagement Core (Meredith-ESI, van Wyk, co-leads): will engage with
every project to enable/perform community-informed research that is relevant and can effect long-term positive
change, and will perform comparative surveys in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the US to lay foundations for future
research proposals. Project 1 (Plowright, Markotter, co-leads): hypothesizes that climate extremes and land use
changes result in wildlife stress, increasing both viral shedding and interaction with humans, facilitating viral
spillover events (paramyxo-, corona-, and filoviruses). Project 2 (Goodman-ESI, de Jager, Riddin-ESI,
Ueckermann-ESI, Oosthuizen, co-leads): hypothesizes that an integrated framework for a community-based
early warning system for climate-sensitive VBD can promote human health, building upon existing remote
sensing with new focus on mosquito-borne arboviruses and tick-borne pa...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10982888
- **Project number:** 1P20AI186093-01
- **Recipient organization:** CORNELL UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Marinda Catharina Oosthuizen
- **Activity code:** P20 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $1,303,195
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-17 → 2027-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10982888

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10982888, Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research on Climate, Health and Equity in a Changing Environment (C-CHANGE) (1P20AI186093-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10982888. Licensed CC0.

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