A Duke Global Health Institute Initiative
Research & Education
CGHI partners with Duke faculty, staff, students, and external collaborators to pursue research and educational projects addressing the health impacts of climate change.
The Initiative issues periodic funding calls and supports partnership development across disciplines. Projects span the full range of CGHI’s mission — from foundational data infrastructure and methods development to place-based research in specific observatory regions.
Interested in proposing a project or collaboration? Get in touch.
Thuy Le and Tom Carpino
This project partners with Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania to investigate the intersection of climate change and emerging fungal disease threats. As rising temperatures expand the thermal tolerance range of pathogenic fungi, previously rare infections are emerging in new geographies and populations.
Charlie Nunn
CGHI partnered with the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine on short-course climate-health training materials. The collaboration bridged evolutionary and climate perspectives on health and helped seed reusable public tutorials and teaching resources.
This project supports the effective development of climate, biodiversity, and health metrics, helping National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) align with new targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and National Action Plans (NAPs) aligning with national climate strategies guided by the UNFCCC. Leveraging existing work and integrated data systems in Latin America, we will evaluate and validate proposed metrics by the CBD Biodiversity and Health Monitoring team, as well as novel metrics developed by our team. This will include regions in the Amazon, Central America, and the United States. Pending results, we will extend validation methods to regions of South Asia.
Building the core data management and analytic infrastructure that underpins CGHI's observatory network. This includes climate data inventory, harmonization, quality control pipelines, and the development of open-source R packages (weathertools, dataplane) for reproducible climate-health data workflows.
Multiple CGHI faculty
Establishing and developing the four regional climate-health observatories that form the core of CGHI's research network. Each observatory integrates climate, environmental, and health data to generate locally relevant insights while contributing to cross-site methods and capacity building.
Interested in proposing a project or exploring a research collaboration? CGHI welcomes project proposals from Duke faculty, students, and external collaborators.
You study or work in one of our observatory regions and have relevant data, expertise, or partnership interest.
You work on climate-health questions and want to connect on methods, data, or joint research.
You're in government, public health, or an NGO and want to explore how climate data can support your work.
You're a student looking for research opportunities, mentorship, or training in climate-health work.
Most inquiries should start here so they can be routed consistently.