Evaluating the impacts of climate and environmental stressors on migration and migrant health in Brazil

Climate and environmental change are key drivers of human displacement and migration, which may compromise the physical and mental health of affected populations. The deleterious impacts of exposure to climate and environmental stressors may be mitigated by improving social and health safety nets to prevent displacement or to support migrants. However, current evidence on the health implications of migration, especially in Low- and Middle-income Countries, remains scarce and imprecise. This proposal will capitalize on Fiocruz’s CIDACS Climate and Environmental Platform, a unique and interdisciplinary data resource linking longitudinal and geocoded environmental, sociodemographic and health data on over 130 million people over 18 years in Brazil. In this fellowship, I aim to discover how climate and environmental stressors shape internal migration in Brazil and impact the health of both internal and international migrants. Specifically, I will quantify how specific climate and environmental stressors (e.g., heatwaves, floods) (i)drive migration, (ii)contribute to communicable and non-communicable diseases, adverse birth outcomes, and mortality across subgroups (e.g., minoritized individuals), and (iii)can be mitigated by social protection programmes. Finally, I will simulate how social protection can mitigate the harmful effects of future climate and environmental events to inform actions and migrant-centered policies to improve population’s resilience.