Pilot funding for cross-disciplinary research that connects environment, nutrition and health

Sustaining Health

Sustaining Health includes the research areas of behaviour change, global nutrition, health impacts of climate change, and ecological public health, challenges that are relevant to all countries. These challenges include overconsumption and obesity in high-income countries, major environmental changes driven by rapidly developing countries, and the impacts of environmental change on the most vulnerable low- and middle-income countries, who themselves are striving to achieve development using the same model that high-income countries have used. The scheme is open to studies based in any country or region. Awards will fund researchers with the vision to innovate and explore the most challenging questions in their field of study, the aim being to select people who are able to articulate a compelling vision for their research, and who demonstrate the talent, track record, originality and leadership to achieve it. Proposals can include research on animal health, as long as it also relates to health of the human population.

The Wellcome Trust Strategic Plan includes a specific challenge in the broad area of 'connecting environment, nutrition and health'. This embraces the research themes of behaviour change, global nutrition, health impacts of climate change, and ecological public health. Public health is seriously threatened by interlinked dangers of a lack of access to nutritious food, clean water and sanitation, by poor air quality, and by environmental (including climate) change, all these developing in parallel with dietary choices and lifestyles that are contributing to an unprecedented burden of obesity and chronic diseases. In light of this, and building on the Wellcome Trust Strategic Plan’s challenge in the broad area of 'connecting environment, nutrition and health', the Sustaining Health awards scheme has been launched to support work which embraces the research themes of behaviour change, global nutrition, health impacts of climate change, and ecological public health, that will yield deeper insights into the issues at stake and develop strategies to mitigate the risks to human health. This call aims to stimulate the formation of creative partnerships that bring together the diversity of competences required to tackle these complex problems and inform the global response through multidisciplinary research.

See “Forms and Guidance” tab on the Wellcome Trust Sustaining Health website.