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

> **NIH NIH P20** · CORNELL UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $255,436

## Abstract

The Administrative Core (AC) has primary responsibility for overseeing and facilitating all aspects of the Center
for Transformative Infectious Disease Research on Climate, Health and Equity in a Changing Environment (C-
CHANGE). These duties encompass both the Center’s transdisciplinary, community-engaged research and its
research capacity building. As such, the AC will house the Center’s leadership, including multi-PIs Dr. Alexander
Travis (Cornell) and Dr. Marinda Oosthuizen (University of Pretoria), lead administrators, Elizabeth Parr (Cornell)
and Ninette Kotzee (University of Pretoria), and program facilitator Jonathan Tager (University of Pretoria). The
AC will provide structure/ support to test the Center’s overall hypothesis, that community-based research that
integrates diverse kinds of data will drive the development of predictive epidemiological models. These will in
turn enable the design and rigorous testing of preventative interventions–a transformative shift from responding
to outbreaks to preventing them before they occur. To realize C-CHANGE’s ultimate goal, the AC must fulfill its
functions of ensuring efficient administrative and organizational operations. The AC will accomplish this mission
through performance of three Specific Aims. First, the AC will provide oversight/governance as a whole, guiding
our science to ensure that it is community-engaged, transdisciplinary, and impact-oriented. We will manage our
External Advisory Committee and self-evaluation processes, and manage and deploy the Center’s financial and
personnel resources. Second, we will ensure timely and efficient flow of scientific information across all
components of the Center, and from the Center to external stakeholders. To create the kinds of predictive models
that are our goal, we must integrate social, climate, land-use, animal and human health, and vector and pathogen
genomic data. To have these models be actionable, and approaches disseminated broadly, we must ensure that
they are informed by both the rural communities with whom we work, and policymakers who might use them.
Third, a major objective of the P20 mechanism is to build research capacity in climate change and health. Toward
this goal, the AC will run competitive pilot grant and Rapid Response Fund grant mechanisms that will favor Early
Stage Investigators and collaborations between Cornell/Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of Pretoria.
These grants will enable junior faculty to test feasibility of ideas, generate preliminary data, and demonstrate
ability to have productive partnerships and community engagement. Lastly, the AC will run a training program
focusing on post-doctoral associates and Early Stage Investigator faculty across both Cornell and the University
of Pretoria. This program will enable groups that are historically underrepresented in science, who make up the
majority of scientists in the Center, to create transdisciplinary networks and learn the “soft skills” that ar...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10982889
- **Project number:** 1P20AI186093-01
- **Recipient organization:** CORNELL UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** ALEXANDER J TRAVIS
- **Activity code:** P20 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $255,436
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-17 → 2027-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10982889

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10982889, Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research on Climate, Health and Equity in a Changing Environment (C-CHANGE) (1P20AI186093-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10982889. Licensed CC0.

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