Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Addressing Extreme Weather Related Diarrheal Disease Risks in the Asia Pacific Region

该奖项为参与一个由55个国家发起的全球变化研究计划通过贝尔蒙特论坛竞争性选定的项目的美国研究人员提供支持。贝尔蒙特论坛是一个研究资助组织联盟，专注于支持以跨学科方法应对全球环境变化的挑战和机遇。它的目的是通过协调和调动国际资源，加速开展最迫切需要的国际研究，以消除对可持续性的关键障碍。每个伙伴国都在一个联合体内为其研究人员提供资金，以减轻跨越国际边界的资金需求。这种方法有助于有效地利用国家资源，支持对具有全球相关性的主题的优秀研究，最好是通过多国方法来解决，认识到全球挑战需要全球解决方案。在这一合作研究行动中，伙伴机构提供支持，培养全球自然(包括气候)、健康和社会科学家以及来自全球的利益攸关方组成的全球跨学科研究团队，以提高对气候、环境和健康途径的理解，以保护和促进健康。这些项目将对气候变化和变异性对以下方面的健康影响提供至关重要的新理解：1)食物的质量/数量；2)长期暴露在高温和湿度的增加/变化中；3)一系列传染病的分布和发病率的变化以及新病原体的出现。该奖项支持美国研究人员在由至少三个参与国的合作伙伴组成的财团中开展合作，以增加我们对气候、环境和健康之间复杂联系和途径的了解，以帮助解决社会面临的复杂挑战。该项目寻求开发一种多学科方法来开发传染病早期预警系统。随着极端天气事件的频率、持续时间和强度的增加，各国，特别是亚太地区的腹泻病发病率和死亡率上升，仅在南亚每年就有超过87.3万人死亡。应对传染病威胁的早期预警系统在公共卫生界引起了相当大的兴趣，因为这种做法与疾病预防的原则产生了共鸣，而疾病预防是公共卫生的核心基础。公共卫生从业人员需要按照所需的时间尺度建立预警系统，以便有足够的时间为预计的情况做准备和作出反应。对于公共卫生专业人员和社区来说，基于天气的警告太短，无法计划应对威胁；基于气候预测的警告在未来太遥远；因此，该项目将侧重于季节性到亚季节性的时间尺度。该项目将与来自亚太地区的研究人员、非政府组织的政府和社区组织合作，包括台湾、印度、中国、越南、尼泊尔、孟加拉国和印度尼西亚，对与极端天气事件相关的腹泻疾病风险进行比较分析。其目标是开发一种可转移的、季节性到亚季节性的早期预警系统，可在整个亚太地区实施，以减少与极端天气相关的腹泻疾病负担，并提高社区适应能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 55-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions.Working together in this Collaborative Research Action, the partner agencies have provided support to foster global transdisciplinary research teams of natural (including climate), health and social scientists and stakeholders from across the globe to improve understanding of climate, environment and health pathways to protect and promote health. The projects will provide crucial new understanding into the health implications arising from the impacts of climate change and variability on; 1) the quality/quantity of food, 2) chronic exposure to increases/changes in heat and humidity and 3) changes in the distribution and incidence of a range of infectious diseases and emergence of novel pathogens. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries to increase our knowledge of the complex linkages and pathways between the climate, environment and health to help solve complex challenges that face societies. The project seeks to develop a multidisciplinary approach to developing early warning systems for infectious diseases. As extreme weather events are increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity, countries especially in the Asia Pacific Region experience elevated rates of diarrheal disease morbidity and mortality, with more than 873,000 deaths/year reported in South Asia alone. Early warning systems to address infectious disease threats are of considerable interest within the public health community as this approach resonates with the principle of disease prevention, a core underpinning of public health. Public health practitioners require early warning systems on time scales needed to provide adequate time to prepare for and respond to projected conditions. Weather-based warnings are too short for public health professionals and communities to plan for the threats; and climate projection-based warnings are too distant in the future; therefore, this project will focus on seasonal to sub-seasonal time scales. The project will engage with researchers, NGO’s governmental, and community organizations from the Asia Pacific Region, including Taiwan, India, China, Vietnam, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Indonesia to undertake comparative analyses of diarrheal disease risk associated with extreme weather events. The goal is to develop a transferable, seasonal to sub-seasonal early warning system that can be implemented across the Asia Pacific Region to reduce extreme weather-related diarrheal disease burdens and improve community resilience.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.