An interdisciplinary team including UW Department of Global Health faculty Jeremy Hess and Kris Ebi was selected for a pilot research grant award from the University of Washington Population Health Initiative. The award will support the formation of a climate action Collaboratory in Washington State.

In total, eight different faculty-led teams received grants. These teams are composed of individuals representing seven different schools and colleges as well as external partners. Generous additional funding from school, college and departmental matching brought the total value of these awards to roughly $530,000.

“We’re delighted to support this year’s awardees in taking on pressing population health challenges ranging from COVID-19 to climate change to infant and child health,” shared Ali H. Mokdad, the university’s chief strategy officer for population health and professor of health metrics sciences. “It’s exciting to see the breadth of innovative ideas and interdisciplinary collaborations proposed in these projects, and we are particularly pleased at the number of community partners who are part of these project teams.”

The Population Health Initiative pilot research grant encourages new interdisciplinary collaborations among investigators for projects that address different challenges in population health.

A Collaboratory to Support Equitable and Just Climate Action

Hess and Ebi’s team proposes to form a Collaboratory between the University of Washington and Front and Centered, a coalition of environmental justice organizations in Washington, to pursue just and equitable climate action.

The Collaboratory will be built around three linked platforms: community engagement, policy analysis, and web-based visualization. The project leads hope the Collaboratory will become an important tool for visualizing just climate action that, once developed, can be scaled to other geographies to facilitate risk management in other settings.

To learn more this proposal, along with the other awardees, see the full, original story on the Population Health Initiative website.