Capacity building in climate and health in the Peruvian Amazon

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PROJECT SUMMARY This D43 training grant is specifically designed to address and correct disparities in training opportunities for researchers in infectious diseases between programs based in the capital in Lima and remote areas in Peru. We offer a collaborative research training program in partnership with the Universidad Nacional de la Amazonia Peruana (UNAP), the largest health education institution in the region. Peru is estimated to be highly impacted by climate change, and the northern Amazon region is expected to experience extreme rainfall and flooding events alternating with an extension of periods of low rainfall resulting in droughts. However, the effects of climate change on health are complex and mediated by human adaptation and migration. To adequately forecast the effects of climate change on the transmission and prevalence of infectious diseases these factors must be understood at the local and regional level. This one year project will adapt and standardize a climate vulnerability indices to Loreto and apply the index in a representative sampling across high flooding risk areas and study human migration in Loreto. These activities will address key knowledge gaps that will enable reliable estimations of the impact of climate change on endemic enteric and vector borne diseases. This information will be an important baseline for the region to inform key stakeholders and provide them with standardized tools to measure vulnerability. This in turn will allow for the programmatic assessment of future mitigation strategies and assess changes in migratory patterns which are key determinants of endemic infectious diseases. The integrated structure of planned research and training will engage UNAP faculty in best practice methodologies for climate vulnerability research, enable the trainees to gain important practice in the conduct of representative sampling for population-based research, and ultimately transition our trainees into roles consistent with their medium-term career goals of becoming research faculty in UNAP. Doctoral students will be able to co-mentor other masters’ trainees through the integration of at least two additional trainees into the project. This intensive, mentored training program will be led by faculty from our four collaborating institutions (UNAP, University of Virginia, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia [the leading biomedical research university in Peru], and Johns Hopkins University). The integrated transdisciplinary team of enteric infectious disease epidemiologists, demographers, earth and planetary scientists, data scientists, infectious disease modelers and local experts in tropical diseases expect to build on the described research activities to pursue expanded opportunities in the study of climate and health, specifically the effect of climate change on the epidemiology of enteric diseases, dengue, and malaria.