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

Follow us@ngobox

About the Organization

Wellcome is a global charitable foundation established in 1936. Through our work we support science to solve the urgent health issues facing everyone. We fund curiosity-driven research, and we’re taking on three of the biggest health challenges facing humanity – climate change, infectious disease and mental health.

With a £37.6 billion investment portfolio, we give researchers the time and resources they need to make breakthroughs. We also work with policy makers, run advocacy campaigns, and form partnerships with other organisations to ensure everyone, everywhere benefits from advances in health science.

About the Grant

The aim of this scheme is to make the impacts of climate change on physical and mental health visible to drive urgent climate policy action at scale. We will fund transdisciplinary teams to deliver short-term, high-impact projects that maximise policy outcomes by combining evidence generation with influencing and engagement strategies.

We are looking for proposals that generate context-specific evidence using community knowledge and experiences to deliver actionable policy outcomes that can be scaled to multiple settings.

We will prioritise funding for research that involves and serves the needs of communities most impacted by the health effects of climate change. We will also prioritise projects that advance stories and narratives that tend to be absent in the media or underrepresented in public discourse (Perga et al, 2023). This will include generating and/or synthesising relevant data and insights (including across multiple sites or countries) on significant health issues arising from climate impacts.

We will support proposals that:

Invest in research: Teams must identify an evidence gap that can be filled within a short time frame (for example, 12-18 months within the project duration) by generating and/or synthesising data and insights on the context-specific environmentally mediated health effects of climate change.

Influence change: Teams must be able to articulate a clear theory of change and strong understanding of policy levers. There must be a policy opportunity that can be targeted within the 3-year timeline. They must demonstrate the demand driving the research, the pull-factors in the policy opportunity targeted, the policy implications of the proposed set of activities and how these can be achieved within the timeframe of the award. They must also show how their research design is innovative and will lead to the desired impact, supporting meaningful and sustainable climate and health action.

Engage people: Meaningfully engage relevant stakeholders and communities from the outset. This should be reflected in the composition of the team as well as the design of the research proposal and communication strategy. Wellcome supports the use of an engaged research approach. This approach asks researchers to include engagement in the design of their project, while being inclusive of a range of stakeholders.

For this award, relevant stakeholders and communities could include:

• local or national governments
• civil society and community-based organisations
• international or multilateral organisations
• private sector or legal sector

We strongly urge providing letters of support for any stakeholder involved in the project, especially if working with Indigenous and/or impacted communities.

A wide range of approaches are acceptable if these achieve the objectives of the award. We expect coapplicants with a diversity of expertise to be included in the application.

While not a requirement, we are particularly interested in receiving proposals that:

• include economic analysis within the programme of work
• foster collaborations with private sector partners
• advance understanding of the limits of adaptation to climate change
• advance narratives that support climate change mitigation
• address policies that support worker health
• look at climate risk on multiple time scales

Inclusive research design

The proposed research should be equitable, diverse and inclusive in a way that is appropriate to the place in which the research is conducted and the aims of the research or other activities.

This should focus on:

• Who defines and does the research: we expect our applicants to demonstrate to us that their research community has substantive input from, and engagement with, the primary end users or subjects of their research, be they patients, participants or policymakers.
• How the research is done: we expect our applicants to demonstrate to us that their research agenda and the design and conduct of their research substantively engages with the needs and values of the people and communities who are participating in, or are the subject of, their research.
• Who benefits from the research: Wellcome already has a commitment to focusing on those most affected by our health challenges. We expect our applicants to be able to demonstrate within their research and activity plans that their outputs will be made meaningfully accessible and used by those who most need it and, if appropriate, those who participated in the research.

How to Apply

You do not need to contact us before you write and submit your application. Preview the application form here.

If this is the first time your organisation is applying for Wellcome funding, please contact fundingsupport@wellcome.org at least three days before the deadline to add your organisation to the system.

Register for our funding webinar on 3 March 2025 at 12:00 GMT. You can submit questions for our team about the award and how to apply ahead of the webinar using Slido and the code #ClimateImpactsAwards. The recording of this webinar will be available on this page after the event.

Submit your application to your administering organisation for approval

Complete your application form on the Wellcome Funding Platform.

Submit it to the 'authorised approver' at your administering organisation for approval. Make sure you leave enough time for the approver to review and submit your application before the deadline. The approver may ask you to make changes to your application.

Administering organisation approves and submits your application to Wellcome

Your application must be submitted by 17:00 BST on the deadline day, 30 April 2025.

For more information please check the Link

Stay in the loop with the newest RFPs and Grants through NGOBOX's WhatsApp Channel. Join now by clicking here!

Tags Environment and Sustainability Healthcare and Healthtech Research Others