The Gund Institute for Environment at ̽̽ has announced a $100,000 Joint Catalyst Award for a research project that will develop tools and resources for primary care clinicians to address patients experiencing climate-change-related health challenges in northern New England. The Gund Institute and Northern New England Clinical & Translational Research Network (NNE-CTR) co-fund the project.
According to ̽̽ Professor and project Principal Investigator Christine Vatovec, the award will allow recipients to understand “what tools our clinicians need to help them prepare as communities respond to climate challenges.” Climate change-induced health risks can range from tick- and mosquito-borne diseases like Lyme and West Nile virus, to illnesses related to heat, air quality, and increased allergens from changes in pollen. A team of co-investigators from ̽̽, MaineHealth, and Northern New England CO-OP Practice and Community Based Research Network, whose fields of practice include scientific and medical research as well as primary healthcare provision, will join Vatovec in this work.
“Our range of backgrounds and expertise truly complement one another,” notes grant Co-Investigator Lesley Gordon, internal medicine physician and Associate Program Director of the IM Residency at MaineHealth Maine Medical Center-Portland.
“This Joint Catalyst Award opens up new partnerships across disciplines and communities,” says Gund Institute for Environment Director Taylor Ricketts. “Health impacts are among the most personal and immediate effects of climate change, and this project gets medical experts from a variety of approaches together to understand them better.”
The grant will cover three steps: a survey of residents across northern New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) to identify their unmet care needs; a survey of and interviews with primary-care clinicians about what they’re seeing in their patients; and a review of currently available climate-related primary care resources. Together, these three steps will position the research team to develop region-specific tools in support of climate-informed primary care in Northern New England.
“Our work aims to gain a baseline understanding of both primary-care clinician and patient perspectives on a range of climate-related health issues, so that we can respond to their needs in a collaborative and useful way,” Gordon says.
This project aims to lessen the burden for primary care clinicians in the face of climate change. Vatovec notes: “Because northern New England is different from the desert Southwest, California, and other places around the country,” it is critical to create and optimize resources specific to the northern New England region.
Vatovec, who is also Planetary Health Lead in the Osher Center for Integrative Health, Clinical Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing & Health Sciences, a Lecturer in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, and a Research Assistant Professor in the Larner College of Medicine, imagines this initial step as establishing a baseline, but she notes that the pursuit could be a decades-long project: “We need to acknowledge that these needs will change five or 10 years from now, especially when different populations start moving into northern New England.”
She explains, “We in Vermont have typically been seen as a climate refuge, although with recent flooding we are increasingly acknowledging that’s not necessarily true. But we do anticipate more people coming here, so how will climate-related health risks change as the climate continues to change and our population continues to both age and grow?”
“The beauty of the Joint Catalyst Award is that it’s not only catalyzed this whole research trajectory that really could become a multi-year program with different facets, but it's also catalyzed this new collaboration across these three states that we haven't seen before,” Vatovec notes. “And we're finding partners in ways that we have not found partnership before: researchers and translational scientists and implementation scientists and clinicians. It's new and exciting to me that this level of partnership has been generated through this award.”
“This is what the Catalyst Award was meant to do: spur cross-cutting research that creates real solutions for people and nature,” Ricketts says. “I am proud to see this effort get underway.”
About the Catalyst Award
Since launching in 2017, the Gund Catalyst Award program has provided $1.72 million in startup funds, supporting 26 innovative projects and over 130 ̽̽ scholars. The program has generated over $40 million in external funds, a 38-to-1 return on investment for completed projects, and inspired real-world action.
Recent Catalyst Awards supported new ̽̽ research on U.S. water quality threats from warming winters, and the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, where the largely Black community is regularly without safe drinking water. Catalyst Awards must connect to Gund research themes, which are related to UN Sustainable Development Goals. Proposals are evaluated by ̽̽ and external evaluators on intellectual merit, interdisciplinary reach, alignment with Gund themes, strength of team, potential for impact, and potential for growth. Additional priority is given to new ̽̽ collaborations and collaborations with colleagues outside ̽̽, as well as opportunities for students. Projects that include a focus on inequality, racial justice, and diversity dimensions of environmental challenges are encouraged, as are those that have policy relevance and potential for real impact.
Learn more about Gund Catalyst Awards.
The Gund Institute also supports fellowships for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and undergraduates; the Apis Fund, which supports conservation and research on bees and other pollinators; and the Eric Zencey Prize in Ecological Economics, which celebrates long-form environmental writing.
About the Gund Institute at ̽̽
The Gund Institute for Environment at ̽̽ is a research center dedicated to understanding and tackling the world’s most critical environmental challenges. Driven by the belief that research should inspire action, the Institute takes a cross-sector approach to solving environmental issues with stakeholders from government, business, and broader society. The Institute focuses on five interconnected research themes: climate solutions, sustainable agriculture, health and well-being, equity and justice, and resilient communities. With over 250 scholars in Vermont and across the world, the Institute brings together a network of internationally recognized researchers from diverse disciplines, including the natural and social sciences, business, health, technology, engineering, and the humanities.
