Children in low- and middle-income countries are among the most vulnerable to health impacts of climate change, particularly through under-nutrition, which causes lifelong health consequences. ClimaKid seeks to close this research and policy gap by working with climate, agricultural and health scientists to attribute children’s health impacts to climate change.
At the heart of the project is an interactive, open-source tool that will combine climate, agricultural, and health data to analyze how climate change affects child health. The tool will be co-designed by the interdisciplinary project team and with support from other scientists and interested parties in a series of international workshops to ensure it is both scientifically robust and practically useful.
During the kick-off workshop held in April, the project team defined priorities, addressed data challenges, and planned the tool development process. Discussions also included tailoring tools and deliverables to different groups and interested parties, and ensuring that the findings contribute to actionable policy pathways.
The ClimaKid consortium includes research institutions across climate science, agriculture, public health, and data modelling. Partners include the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques in Côte d'Ivoire (CSRS), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), SIG-GIS, DeVera Consulting, Meteo Rwanda, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the University of Edinburgh.
The ClimaKid project is part of the Wellcome funding call “Attriverse: Developing Digital Solutions for Health Impact Attribution”, in which PIK (RD 2) is also involved through another project (Afriverse). In addition, PIK (RD 5) is leading another project funded by Wellcome called DESTINY- Digital Evidence Synthesis Tool Innovation Yielding Improvements in Climate & Health.
