Brown, especially through the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, the School of Public Health, and the Warren Alpert Medical School, has existing research strengths in the monitoring of environmental and societal hazards and indicators of change, as well as climate and health, specifically infectious disease, heat-related mortality, tropical medicine and hygiene, migration due to climate change, and air quality.
ECF will leverage these strengths to:
- Develop the next generation of multi-sector data streams for climate resilience and health, which can leverage new sensor technology and community science, both environmental and human.
- Innovate data science approaches to assess the impacts of climate change on human health.
- Characterize spatially inequitable health exposures in pilot communities, beginning in Rhode Island.
- Focus on who is most at risk from climate change health impacts, what are the key hazards and vulnerabilities, and when and how often exposures will occur (e.g. heatwaves, coastal flooding, food and water insecurity, ecosystem change, disease).