Cornell faculty and staff in the Department of Public & Ecosystem Health in the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, in partnership with the University of Pretoria in South Africa awarded an NIH P20 grant to support the development of a new center, the Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research on Climate, Health, and Equity in a Changing Environment (C-CHANGE). The center’s development aligns with NIH’s strategic priority of reducing health threats from climate change. This includes efforts to build health resilience in individuals and communities, especially among those at highest risk.

The grant will support several research projects involving students and faculty from Cornell and Pretoria. Projects include:

• Investigation into how climate extremes and land use changes result in wildlife stress, increasing both viral shedding and interaction with humans, facilitating viral spillover events (Dr. Raina Plowright and Dr. Wanda Markotter).
• Explore animal and human health and ecological and genomic data on tick- and mosquito-borne diseases to create community-based early warning systems for vector transmission of pathogens (Dr. Laura Goodman and Drs. Marinda Oosthuizen, Veronica Ueckermann, Megan Riddin, and Tiaan de Jager).
• The Living Evidence and Applied Data Modeling Core will work to ensure all data generated are accessible across disciplines to all C-CHANGE researchers and partners (Drs. Alistair Hayden, Laura Smith, and Ana Bento and Dr. Vukosi Marivate).
• The Community Engagement Core will ensure that C-CHANGE’s researchers partner with the most vulnerable communities at all stages of the projects (Dr. Gen Meredith and Dr. Ilana Van Wyk).