Climate Impacts Awards: Unlocking urgent climate action by making the health effects of climate change visible

The aim of this scheme is to make the impacts of climate change visible across a wide range of physical and mental health outcomes in order to drive urgent climate policy and practice change at scale. This scheme will fund transdisciplinary teams to deliver short-term, high-impact projects, combining evidence generation with communications and/or public engagement.

Scheme at a glance 

Career stage:
Established researcher, Mid-career researcher
Where the administering organisation of the lead applicant is based:
Anywhere in the world (apart from mainland China)
Level of funding:

Up to £2.5 million. In exceptional cases we may award above this. 

Duration of funding:

Up to 3 years

Next deadline

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This page was updated on 3 April 2023 to provide further clarity on this award.

About this scheme 

We will fund transdisciplinary teams that may include researchers, policymakers, practitioners, community stakeholders, communications, and public engagement experts with capacity to use evidence to drive climate action. By engaging decision-makers from the outset we expect that teams will increase the profile of the evidence, advance impactful narratives on the effects of climate change on health and use these to drive urgent policy and practice change at scale.  

This will include generating and synthesising evidence (including across multiple sites/countries) on under-researched but significant health issues arising from climate impacts that fill a policy and practice-relevant evidence gap and/or present localising knowledge to specific contexts where evidence is missing. Funded projects should engage affected populations and communities, policy makers and/or practitioners in the framing, delivery, and/or communication of the research.  

We will prioritise funding for research that serves the expressed needs of at-risk populations and communities with high exposure and vulnerabilities to the health impacts of climate change. In this context, vulnerability may result from the intersection of factors such as geography, socio-economic status, demography, gender, race, ability, ethnicity, co-morbidities and occupation.

There are many reasons the impacts of climate change could be invisible. These include but are not limited to:

  • distance: decision makers not being based where the impacts are happening
  • ideology: political polarisation results in missing voices; disinformation or lack of information
  • chemistry: climate impacts on environmental drivers of health outcomes may not be visible to the naked eye. For example, pollutants that result from flooding
  • linkage between climate change and health impacts not being explicitly made
  • lack of priority of health impacts because populations are overfamiliar with the problem
  • lack of metrics to be able to measure certain things and a lack of data needed to quantify the impacts
  • communications challenges: lack of accessibility, jargon heavy science language, health impacts not making headlines.

Eligibility and suitability 

About your proposal 

What we offer 

How to apply 

Log in to our online grants system (Grant Tracker). You can save your application and return to it any time.

Disabled applicants

If you are disabled or have a long-term health condition, we can support you with the application process

Key dates 

You must submit your application by 17:00 BST on the deadline day. We don’t accept late applications. 

Open to applications

  1. Webinar

    20 February 2023, 13:00 UTCWatch recording
  2. Full application deadline

    13 April 2023
  3. Final funding decisions

    July 2023

Contact us 

Questions on eligibility, what we offer and applications

If you have a question about eligibility, what we offer or about completing the application form using Wellcome Trust Grant Tracker, send our funding information advisers a message

Remit questions 

If you have a question about your proposal, contact us at: climateimpacts@wellcome.org  

We do not answer questions on the scope or competitiveness of proposals. 

Useful documents