Ongoing

BAFR-UK

The Backcasting to Achieve Food Resilience in the UK (BAFR-UK) project aims to strengthen the UK food system’s resilience to external shocks by identifying key vulnerabilities and developing policy interventions. Using backcasting from collapse scenarios, the project will prioritize areas needing urgent action. Collaborating with stakeholders across the food supply chain, BAFR-UK will support a transition toward a more robust and shock-resistant system. The project is leaded by Anglia Ruskin University, in partnership with experts from different universities and with external partners including the Food Ethics Council, Sustain, WWF.

Children, Cities and Climate

The Children, Cities and Climate Action Lab aims to address the interconnected challenges of averting climate breakdown; leveraging the central role of cities in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving human health; and analysing the child health co-benefits of improving the quality of urban environments. This project is led by LSHTM in collaboration with YLabs, C40 and UrbanBetter.

DESTINY

DESTINY (Digitial Evidence Synthesis Tool INnovation for Yielding Improvements in Climate & Health) will co-develop a new generation of digital evidence synthesis tools (DESTs) and showcase their transformational power for the delivery of rigorous living evidence in climate and health that matters to policymakers and other evidence users. This defines who we work with, how we work, and the technology we use to make evidence synthesis dramatically more useful.

Pathfinder Initiative

The Pathfinder Initiative project aims to accelerate a just transition to a healthy, sustainable future by providing evidence to inform policies and actions that bring benefits to both climate and health.

As part of the first phase of the project, researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine carried out a review of existing evidence on the health benefits of climate action and gathered case studies from around the world of implemented solutions with measured greenhouse gas emissions reductions and health benefits. The findings are published in the report of the Lancet Pathfinder Commission, and available on the Pathfinder Initiative Climate & Health Evidence bank.

The second phase of the Pathfinder Initiative is underway, and has three main areas of focus: strengthening the evidence base for action on climate and health; supporting the implementation and evaluation of climate mitigation policies and actions that aim to promote health; and strengthening capacity of partners and key actors delivering high-ambition decarbonisation activities in sub-Saharan Africa.   

SHEFS-SA

The Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems – Southern Africa (SHEFS-SA) programme, funded by the Wellcome Trust’s Climate Research Partnerships, is a multi-partner, Global South-led research programme led out of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, with collaborators in the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe and Malawi to ensure regional policy impact. The SHEFS-SA community comprises a consortium of partners and collaborators in universities, research institutes, local/regional government entities, and informal, peri-urban and rural communities, forming a Community of Practice (CoP). SHEFS-SA is an extension of the Wellcome Trust-funded Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems (SHEFS) programme, which ran from 2017 to 2023.

Visibilize4ClimateAction in East Africa Project

This project aims to highlight the health impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations in the East African drylands through research, public and policy engagement to catalyse climate policy and practice change. Specifically, the project will analyse historical climate, ecological and nutritional status data to quantify climate impacts on nutritional status, conduct primary research to document communities’ lived experiences with climate change impacts on nutritional status and mental health, and model future scenarios and costs of the impacts.

Completed

ABC-SHEADE

The Accelerating Behaviour Change towards Sustainable and HEAlthy Diets in Europe (ABC-SHEADE) project is driving real-world shifts toward healthier, more sustainable eating—more plant-based foods, less reliance on animal products. The project examines how real people are making real changes: shifting to diets with lower carbon footprints that align with national and global climate goals. Focusing on the UK and Italy, we’re studying how some consumers have (or have not) been rebalancing their diets toward more plant-based choices and fewer animal-based foods (the “champions”. A key part of this work is understanding the role of plant-based alternatives in driving such change. We also look at how food culture shapes what’s possible or realistic in terms of dietary change. These country case studies reveal not just what works, but what works well within each cultural context, which informs effective interventions and policies.