Good afternoon, everyone.
This is Rick Woychik, the director of NIEHS
and I want to welcome you to this special session
of the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Committee.
I want to start off by saying that pursuant pursuant to the government
in the Sunshine Act, all aspects of this meeting
are open to the public, except for the review , discussion
and evaluation of grant applications and related information.
So again, welcome all of you to the special session
and we're going to be presenting to you a. A
concept to address
the challenges associated with climate change and health,
and for reasons that will become clear in just a few minutes.
Joining me for this meeting are six other IOC directors
and I'd like to just take a moment to ask them to introduce themselves.
So could we start off with Dr. Bianchi?
Hello, everyone, I hope you can see me,
I can only see Dr Boyd check right now, can you see me?
Let's see.
Yes, we can.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
It's my it's my pleasure because this is an incredibly
important issue for children and families.
Terrific. Diana, thank you.
And Dr. Zink
Shannon Hi, Shannon, I think
from the National Institute of Nursing Research.
Terrific.
Great to have you with us.
And Dr. Ellis, they are established.
Good afternoon or good morning for some, I am, Melissa.
But is this him?
The director of the National Institute
on Minority Health and Health Disparities and glad to be here.
Terrific, great.
And we also joining us, Dr.
Gibbons.
Yes. Thank you, Rick.
We're delighted to be part of this as director
of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute important area,
particularly regarding the health effects of climate change.
Great. Glad to be part of this. Thank you.
Terrific.
Excellent.
And let's see, has Dr. Glass.
I'm right here, thanks, and I'm
glad to join this on behalf of Florida International Center.
And I think there's probably no other issue that can be as global
as climate change.
It affects absolutely everyone, everywhere.
So we're delighted to be here.
Excellent. Very good.
And Dr.
Gordon, have you joined us yet?
Yes, Rick, I'm trying to start my video, there you go.
You can see me, you're not. I can't see me.
I'm on an iPad. But anyway, yes, I'm here.
I actually have another meeting.
I'm trying to juggle back and forth,
but I'm going to stay with this one as much as I can.
It's this is climate change obviously have huge impacts on mental health.
A lot of what we can predict from other work based upon say, for example,
what we know about the mental health impacts of of migrations and of disasters
and of economic stressors, et cetera.
But it's really important that we do the research necessary to understand
which communities are going to be greatest affected from a mental health
perspective and also develop interventions that can help mitigate these effects.
So really, really pleased to be joining you and and really pleased that
you're giving us the opportunity to help to help build a program in this area.
Well, thanks to my six other IOC directors,
and I also want to introduce our acting deputy director, Dr.
Gwen Collman.
Afternoon, everyone.
Happy to be here with all of you.
And I want to introduce the acting director for our division
of astronaut research and training.
Everyone, Gary Ellison here, acting director of the division
of Extramural Research
and Training, as Dr. Woychik mentioned and welcome all of you,
Great
And Gary, I think you're going to take us through and introduce our council members
and some of the other visitors that we have from other states.
Is that correct?
That's correct. Correct.
And so I'll begin now
again.
I want to welcome all of you to this special session of the National Advisory
Committee for Environmental Health Sciences,
and I'd like to thank all of the individuals
who worked so tirelessly to put this together.
I'd like to start with
an introduction of our council members,
and if when I call your name, please
state your name and your affiliation.
Let's start with Dr.
Goldman.
Hello, everybody, I'm Lynn Goldman, and I am dean of the Milken
Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
Thank you.
The Goldman doctor her specialty.
I don't believe she's on it yet.
OK. All right.
Dr. Cavanaugh.
John?
Yes, thank you, Gary.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Terry Cavanaugh.
I'm a professor at the University
of Washington Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences.
Both Terry.
Good to see you, Dr.
Coffeemaker.
Hi, I'm Katrina Smoker,
I addressed the Community Engagement Corps at the University of Rochester
Environmental Health Sciences Center gave Katrina Adobe to Parker.
Hi, I'm Edith Parker.
I'm the dean at the University of Iowa College of Public Health.
Thank you, Edith and Dr. Penny.
Hi, everyone. Thank you, Gary.
This is Trevor penning.
I'm the director of the Center of Excellence in Toxicology,
which is the University of Pennsylvania's P30 Environ Health Sciences Call Center.
Thank you, Trevor, that the Lugo.
Hi, everyone.
Can you hear me?
Yes. OK.
My name is Marla logo and I am a professor in the Department of Sociology
and Disaster Studies at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.
Thank you, Mala.
Dr. Asset Brad Washington University School of Medicine.
Thank you, Brad.
Dr. Tanqueray, Dr.
Robin Tank. We're here at Oregon State University.
I also directed the Superfund research program here.
Thank you, Robin. Dr. Vasquez.
I don't believe Cairns on either.
OK, doctor, right Wright,
Brighton chair of Environmental Medicine at Mount Sinai School
of Medicine and director of the Expo's OMICS Institute.
Thank you, Bob.
Dr Sebelius.
Hello.
And also bullies, and I am an ex officio member to the council, and I represent
both the Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Environmental Health,
as well as the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Thank you, Bill.
Dr. Fitzpatrick.
I don't believe she's on you.
OK? And Dr.
Geller, I know you're.
Yes, this is Andrew Geller.
I'm also an ex officio member representing the Environmental Protection Agency.
I'm in the Office of Research and Development, where I'm the executive
lead for lead and environmental justice research.
Thanks.
Thank you, Andrew.
And we have some special guests with us today, members of other councils,
among the six institutes and centers that are involved in this initiative.
So I'll start with Dr. Telfair.
Hello.
I'm Joseph Telfair, and I am professor
and associate dean at Practicing Research at Georgia Southern University.
And I'm representing the M.H.
Council Advisors.
Thank you and welcome Dr.
Wang.
Hello, my name is
Rebecca Wong and a professor of health disparities, population and public health
at the University of Texas Medical Branch, and I'm
representing the Nikkei Council.
Thank you, Dr. Wong.
Dr Lowe.
Hello,
my name is John Lowe, and I am a professor at the University of Texas
at Austin School of Nursing, and I'm representing the council and INR.
Thank you and welcome Dr.
Waist-High.
Good afternoon.
I'm Judy Wasser height.
I'm the chair of the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington
and a professor of medicine and epidemiology here,
and I am representing the Fogerty, the Advisory
Committee of the Fogarty International Center.
Thank you for hosting this.
Thank you.
And Dr. Zorya.
Hello, everybody, I'm sorry.
I'm an OB-GYN by training currently dean of research at the European School
of Medicine Medical Sciences Campus, Actually, and AM member
of the Council of the National Institute of Minority Health and Disparities.
And to be here.
Thank you so much, everyone.
Thank you for being here today.
We have a lot to cover, and so I'd like to get
started with just a few announcements.
And so first of all,
how we conduct this virtual could be meeting.
The meeting is being webcast and is important for
our microphones to be turned off after speaking.
And as Nathan mentioned earlier today,
please leave your camera off unless you're speaking
and and we'll ask you to unmute
and also display your camera when you're called on.
Members of the
public who may wish to express views regarding any items discussed
during the meeting may do so by sending an email to council
using the address listed on the council web page.
And I'll read that for you.
It's NationalAdvisoryCouncil@NIEHS.NIH.GOV
Again, that's It's NationalAdvisoryCouncil@NIEHS.NIH.GOV
Voting will be conducted electronically via
the council book, and you should have received instructions
from Liz McNair on how that would operate.
And so what's going to happen today is that
we'll have a concept presentation by Dr.
Claudia Thompson.
There'll be three reviewers who will discuss the concept
and then we'll open it up for discussion
for other members of the council,
and we'll have a vote soon after that.
So with that said, I'll turn it back over to Dr.
Wirtek for the remarks before we go back to our concept.
Terrific. Thanks very much, Dr. Allison.
So I'll start off by just giving you a little background here.
The concept to be presented during the special counsel by Dr.
Thompson will outline a strategic framework to address the climate crisis,
and we'll be doing this by proposing to to do basically four different things.
first is to strengthen the capacity for climate and health research at home
and abroad.
It will
also promote the best science and most impactful interventions,
with an emphasis on health equity and community engaged research.
It will also support a pipeline of climate change in health.
I'm sorry to support a client, a pipeline of climate change and health
workforce and research, and to promote synergies through collaboration
with other federal agencies and research organizations.
So let me go to the next slide, please.
So there's a little background, I suspect, that you all realize that
since the inauguration last January, there has been an increasing
focus on climate change across the federal government.
President Biden created the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity,
and he has also developed a specific plan, a set of plans on climate change.
He also issued executive order 14 008
that specifically involves tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad.
It takes a government wide approach to the climate crisis, and it's based on
an environmental justice framework to support the executive order.
The presidents of the House and the Senate budgets
have all included language to allocate $100 million
to support research in climate change and health equity.
So while in justice has been one of the lead
I seized on climate change and health in the past,
it's clear that the challenges associated with climate change
greatly elevates threats to human health across a wide
range of illnesses and injuries that are being studied across the NIH.
It's bigger than what New Year, just or what any single ICC can do.
So while the $100 million will be put into the New Year just budget,
other ices at the NIH were named and they have deliverables
relating to the executive order.
And it's also clear that the Biden administration is looking for a niche wide
response to the climate to the issues of climate change and health.
So therefore, we're taking an approach where the hundred billion dollars
will be used to catalyze an NIH wide response
to address the needs around climate change and health and health equity.
So next slide, please.
So to
provide leadership for this nice wide response to several of us, I see directors
that have a keen interest in climate change and health.
They're joining us for this special session, value counsel,
and they've introduced themselves at the beginning of this session.
So while I'm chairing the executive committee, well, actually, we're
all forming what's called the Executive Committee for Climate Change and Health.
Now I'm chairing the Executive Committee
and I'll be working with other members of the committee
to provide input on the directions of climate change and health
and equity health equity research at the NIH.
So most notably, the Executive Committee has re-energized
a longstanding working group with over 120 members
from 18 offices and four offices across the NIH.
The working group is co-chaired by Dr.
Aubrey Miller at NIEHS and Dr.
Josh Rosenthal at the Albany International Center.
So there is a steering committee of the working group
with designated appointees from the six represented on the Executive Committee.
The steering committee is working with doctors Miller and Rosenthal to make.
Sure, that the goals of the working group are achieved.
And Dr Coleman, an idea justice providing the much needed central coordination
to make sure that everything is working in synchrony with each other.
So we're working hard to engage other IOC directors and their staffs
to be working with us on this I.h wide initiative.
So next slide, please.
So before turning this back over to to Dr.
Ellison, I want to once again recognize all members of the executive committee
who introduced themselves at the beginning,
and I truly appreciate their willingness to join me to take the time to serve
on the executive committee and provide leadership for this new wide initiative.
So thanks again to all of you for joining for today's session.
Next slide in my final slide here is again, I want to just
acknowledge the co-chairs of the working group,
as well as members of the steering committee and others that contributed
in very important ways to getting us to where we are today.
So without further ado, and to keep things moving along here,
let me turn this back over to Dr.
Ellison, and he will review, I believe, going to review
the confidentiality and conflict of interests.
So, Gary, it's all yours.
Thank you, Dr.
Lloyd said.
We'll get right into the presentation by Dr.
Thompson, and if we could bring those slides
up, please and Claudia,
please prepare to
present the concept.
Thank you.
OK, thanks.
So good afternoon, everybody.
I'm very excited and really honored to present
to you on behalf of the very large NIEHS Team
Dr. Woychik just acknowledged a concept in Nature, Climate
Change and Health Initiative.
All right, one.
I do not need to tell this audience that climate change is putting our planet
and all its inhabitants at risk, national and international organizations
have coalesced and issued proclamations of concern.
A recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
report was called a code red for Humanity by the U.N.
secretary general.
There is irrefutable evidence
that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation
are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.
Global heating is affecting every region on Earth,
with many of the changes becoming irreversible.
But this
past year also demonstrated that climate change hazards do not go away
just because other health crises are erupting.
This is a figure from a paper by Philip say all that was published in Nature
Climate showing that during the worldwide COVID 19 pandemic,
there were still major climate disasters occurring across the globe
and in many times putting at most risk under-resourced
and marginalized populations.
As Dr.
Wojciech mentioned in his opening remarks, there is a renewed federal action
on climate change.
The complexity of climate change impacts on health are enormous, being mediated
by interrelated environmental exposures, social and behavioral factors.
These relationships are clearly illustrated in this diagram developed by
the Global Climate Research
Program Health Assessment of 2016.
As you can see here, climate drivers, as depicted in the center
top, affect health outcomes directly through weather events
such as extreme heat, wildfires, droughts, storm surges and floods,
but also indirectly through a series of exposure pathways
shown in the middle of this graphic, such as air and water quality,
soil quality, infectious disease and population displacement events.
These pathways, in turn, are influenced by environmental context
related to land use, geography, infrastructure and agriculture,
as depicted in the gray box on the map, as well as social behavioral
economic contexts that create vulnerabilities across live stage gender
poverty, discrimination and access to care as listed in the gray box on the right.
When we look at this holistically,
it's clear that there's lots of interconnections here
and that the solutions for climate crisis will require innovative
transdisciplinary research , which will also use a systems approaches.
We must also be cognizant that though climate change
may affect all of us, there are many that will be disproportionately affected.
This includes underserved populations with health disparities,
exposed workers, persons with disabilities,
vulnerabilities of related to life stages such as during the fatal
prenatal period, pregnant women or the elderly, to name a few
vulnerabilities that are associated with preexisting chronic medical conditions,
as well as populations of low and middle income countries where there is existing
diseases, malnutrition and extreme poverty.
Considering all the resources and experience at NIH for addressing
really complex issue, there is probably no more of a challenging issue
than the impact of climate change on our health.
Taking the call to a solution driven action nature's fashionista
estrategia framework
to lead the agency forward with a climate change and health initiative.
This next slide
just summarizes what the goal and objectives of our program.
It's to reduce health threats across lifespan and build
health resilience in individuals, communities and nations across the world,
especially among those at the highest risk.
Our objectives are to identify risks and optimize benefits
to develop the necessary research, infrastructure and workforce
to leverage partnerships across many different scientific
disciplines and organizations to achieve the most impactful results
and innovate across the research community to ensure findings are credible,
usable and equitable.
As Dr. Woychik mentioned,
There's been a very large team that's been working
tirelessly through the summer to to get to where we are today.
And if nothing, it's been full speed ahead and on a very accelerated
pace, as you can see from the timeline on the right.
Starting with the formation of the executive committee in the summer,
there have been a number of inputs and activities that have occurred
over the last three or four months that really been useful in forming
and shaping our strategic framework moving forward in.
Some of those inputs are shown on the left of the slide.
I'd like to take just a few minutes
to go through some of what we've been doing and and the results
and findings from these activities.
first, I'd like to discuss a portfolio analysis
that was led by Louise Rosenbaum from Nursing and Christy Drew at NIEHS,
a portfolio of 350 funded wards from fiscal year 2011 to 2020 across the NIH.
This dark matter, experts of the working group,
as well as the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis.
The following graphs displays initial characterization
of the portfolio, as you can see from this picture.
The greatest number of the work grants funded were by NIEHS
But what's really important is that 21 other agencies
also supported climate change in health research and capacity building projects.
As you can see, in essence of allergy and infectious disease was second
next tied to the number of funded wards, followed by far
with the International Center
and the National Institute of Child Health and Development.
Doing a deeper dove using the NIH research,
conditioned disease privatization and its climate change category,
our RC DC concepts were identified
for each of the 350 awarded grants.
Initially, more than 50 300 different concepts were identified,
but that's really not manageable.
So we there was a selection of the top concepts
based on measures of uniqueness and frequency.
And this slide is showing the results of a couple
of the concepts that I wanted to pull up for you today.
Of the 350 awarded grants,
233 experts explicitly identified weather
related concepts with the most common terms listed on the left bubble.
And similarly, 215 awards explicitly identified
a health outcome and those that are most common are shown in the right field.
They said this is really just the beginning of a much greater dot
analysis that will move forward to really understand where we are
and see where the gaps are and help to inform programs as we move forward.
Another area activities that
we did this summer was issuing a request for application.
The purpose for this was to really gather
input on approaches that age can take to enhance research
on the health implications of climate change in the US and globally.
LED by Regina, Birth of Child Health and women myself at NIH
as the steering committee issued a request for information on July 30th,
with responses due on September 17.
As you can see on this first slide, there was total of 184 responses received
from a range of organizations since depicted on the pie
chart on the left, with the majority representing academic institutions.
But was really kind of cool.
And I think impressive is that many of the responses
that were received actually represented consensus statements from an organization
or from multiple departments within the university.
While all the data that we collected on
that submissions were coded along the lines of the six climate change
and health priority areas that are shown on the graphic on the right,
as you can see from the slide, the greatest number of responses addressed
innovative research,
and we saw similar short responses for translation dissemination,
scientific infrastructure, diverse workforce and partnerships to address
environmental justice and resilience and
and less for the research response.
So I'd just like to take a few minutes to summarize
some of the common themes that we saw across these
different priority areas.
So when we look at
innovative research,
there is overwhelming affirmation of the ideas outlined in our fight,
and many provided specific strategies to address the priorities and gaps
or provided additional topic urged for research to be done.
Another common message that we saw was
that research needed was needed on the direct particular
text of climate change, the effects of adaptation
and mitigation strategies from the mechanistic level
to the population level, and research evaluating co-benefits of climate change.
When we consider the scientific infrastructure to address
climate change and health.
one of the common themes that we saw was that nature.
NIH should take a leadership role in collecting, managing
and sharing data available from national repositories
and creating that structure for data in terms of availability, usability
and forming networks of resources that are available
to broad public.
When we look
at concert research and community partnerships, climate equity
and Justice Woods very frequently identified as an important concept that
needed to be incorporated into programs that we developed for this initiative.
Cultivating domestic international partnerships
was also mentioned quite frequently, as well as the need
for community involvement being an integral part of the research
education outreach activities for this initiative.
When we
consider translation dissemination of research findings,
a common message was the need for improving community communication
and dissemination of the findings to the various stakeholders
and development of sound evidence based policies and interventions.
There is also recognize the need to support research and research
to practice partnerships for effectively communicating to broad audiences,
as well as providing transparent, inclusive processes
to ensure equitable engagement by experts with those with live,
with lived experiences, non-profits and some philanthropic organizations
so that the data that is communicated is equitable and means viable.
And lastly, when we look at diverse workforce
to address human health and climate change, it was emphasized
the importance of transdisciplinary efforts for education, training, research,
outreach and communication, as well as fostering partnerships
between research intensive universities and minority serving institutions
in order to reach more levels of the health workforce in establishing
pipelines, providing more diverse students into the health sciences.
And last.
When we think about rapid response capacity,
there
was a general feeling that was important for the collection of baseline
health data, especially in areas of high probability of extreme weather events,
as well as considering different approaches for collecting
real near real time analysis of climate related hazards
on the functioning of health systems.
Another activity
that was occurred this this fall was the landscape analysis
to provide that high level overview of activities related to climate change
in terms of research funding organizations outside of NIH,
a small group
led by a ministry and hailing North Sofosbuvir, the International Center
compiled information based on publicly available sources.
A lot of the information is based on programmatic interest, funding,
opportunity announcements and descriptions of previously funded grants.
And this was done in the fall.
I think the main point I'd like to make here is that
there are many different activities that are going across the US,
federal government agencies, as well as international organizations.
But when we think about coordination, Eric groups
that are focusing on climate and health focused research and
and agencies and groups that have data and information
that can be relatively relevant to climate change and health programs.
But I think it's really important that we understand what
identify these potential topics and partners
for future communication, coordination and collaboration of activities,
as well as to identify areas of unique NIH contributions.
Because I think it will be important to be complementary to not duplicative
and to really look at where
those intersection now these are between our various organizations
in order to Leavitt to leverage all the knowledge available
in order to advance an initiative in climate change and health.
The last
activity I'd like to briefly mention is that NIH Working Group
synthesis or whiteboard meeting that was held in September.
The purpose of this was to gain input from internal climate change and help
working group and steering committee members on what they consider
the most important actions for NIH to explore.
It was really a very robust two and a half three hour meeting
brought together 61 participants from twelve issues,
and we discussed the five themes new ideas, gaps and case study examples.
At the end of the day, which is really I think
some heartening was that when we really, when we look at the comments are coming
across the NIH in consideration of what we've heard from many other inputs.
There's real coalescing of of need and topic areas for the future,
including the importance of training, tool development, equity,
looking at the co-benefits
systems, transdisciplinary approaches, fostering partnerships
and the role of community health workers and citizen science and strategies
to increase diversity, equity, inclusiveness of the biomedical workforce.
So to this point, I've really been summarizing
a lot of information that we've collected over the summer and fall
that has been helping to form and shape
our strategic framework and initiative.
And I'm just putting this slide back up to remind you of the goals
and the objectives of this of this concept.
And so as we of.
Sorry about that.
So what will we take
all the information we gathered, as well as the expertize of a members of our team?
We have formally this visual that depicts,
I'm sorry about that phone call.
We have this visual here that
that depicts our framework and how we can think about
operationalizing accounts of climate change and health initiative.
And it really, you know, is grounded
in a foundation of four core tenants, including Health Effects Research,
which is that scientific investigation of influences of climate change on health
outcomes, including spatial and temporal scales , pathways, mechanisms
and risks of specific times of vulnerability
across the life stage, as well as to special populations.
Such research will inform the identification of trends,
prediction of risk and adoption of actions
to prevent and respond to the negative health outcomes.
Another key tenet of the submission of this framework is health equity.
The emphasis on integration throughout.
Sorry,
health equity, which is the emphasis on integration throughout the initiative
on recognizing responding to the needs of populations most at risk
of the climate change impacts to the health.
Health equity requires elevation of. Of
the concern to rights of under
and historically disadvantaged communities, underserved and help
disparate populations and communities burdened by environmental injustice
and including communities of color by bringing focused attention
to the lived experiences of the most affected individuals of communities,
will ensure
that the benefits of our scientific discovery create greater health equity .
A third core tenet is intervention research.
That's science that provides evidence base for development and implementation
of timely and effective strategies
to prevent disease and disability promote health.
The urgency of the climate change of changing climate provides
an imperative for research that can both guide individual actions
and policies of community and population levels
to improve health outcomes now and in the future.
And the last core Tenet is training a capacity building
that transmission of the fundamental knowledge and skills to conduct
multidisciplinary employment, health sciences, developing innovative
and supporting technologies, and to translate findings to facilitate
understanding of and adaption to the growing threat of climate change and health.
And so
and so,
you know, and then in order to implement these four core tenets
or a number of different fields of science
that are listed on the cards on the outside of the real
and you know, it's important to realize that to advance
this field is not a number of silence working independently.
But in fact, is that global cross sectional, cross-sector, interagency
and community partnerships that will integrate information
across many different fields and areas in order to create that
transdisciplinary, transformative research that we envision for this program.
And as we all know, Transdisciplinary Research is really hard
and it takes a lot of time and it takes lots of people working together,
finding commonalities in a common language.
And so the implementation of a climate change and health initiative
will require experts from a wide breadth of fields
that are just sort of illustrated in this word cloud here.
Now is Dr.
Wojciech mentioned the consequences of climate change impact
all of us is not the purview of any one
particular I see, but affects and is important
to the mission areas of all of the NIH institutes and centers.
And so the next couple of slides, I just wanted to put some examples of
of different topics and themes that are relevant to the NIH
and why it's important for NIH to be initiating this program.
We understand quite a.
Well, quite a lot that dead
heat related research has has impacts on multiple health
outcomes from elevated preterm delivery of babies to stroke to increased
stroke rates in adults that are in public housing during heatwaves.
The increases in cardiovascular events and increases
in conditions associated with droughts and high temperatures.
When we envision kinds of research projects
that address some of these issues, it can be from a very mechanistic studies
to understand how these exposures impacts other systems.
two randomized controlled trials
with cooling, spaced and hydration for elderly or pregnant moms.
Characterizing social environmental determinants of health among
high risk communities for toward diseases, as well as looking at launch showed
clinical change in black, indigenous and people of color due to climate change.
We also are aware that
the impacts of climate change is on mental health and community health.
There is no literature showing the looming
anxiety, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse following natural disasters.
That behavior change, violence and poor learning
is associated with huge exposures, as well as, for example,
loss of cultural identity, especially for indigenous peoples
or the contemplation of impaired future.
We can start addressing some of these issues from projects
that might look at how we can address climate change and depression,
reducing the incidence of suicide in indigenous groups or implementation
science to ensure health equity.
The last example I wanted to
provide was just in infectious diseases.
We're quite aware that there will be a changing there's a changing distribution
of vector borne diseases in relation to temperature and rainfall changes.
Frequencies of malaria, dengue virus and water borne infections
will increase globally with a changing climate,
as well as the emergence of zoonotic viruses with climate associated changes.
For example, and wildfire and agricultural animals.
Some examples could be looking at developing computational modeling
that work to predict outbreaks of vector borne diseases or following high
rainfall events or training in low and middle income countries.
Research response to client
merging climate change events. So,
so what are our next steps?
We are anticipating, as Dr.
Wojciech mentioned,
based on current appropriation language, the NHS could receive as much as $100
million in fiscal year 2020 to to launch a climate change and health initiative.
As also mentioned, the guiding principle for how this program
will be implement and manage this
through shared leadership and collaboration across the NIH
and with the uncertainties of when NIH will receive its fiscal 22 appropriation,
we might be facing a very rapid push out of the funds.
So the next few slides articulate an initial rollout
plan for fiscal year 22 and early 23.
And I just want to emphasize again that this is just the beginning
for a long, sustained climate change and health program for the NIH.
The use of
current and infrastructural enable us to create a sustainable portfolio
of climate change and health research,
for example, appropriation can be used as a catalyst
to expand funding for grants across the nation and ecosystem
to create a sustainable portfolio
of investigator initiated research,
which is creating a pool of available dollars.
From the appropriation, I see contributions
looking at funding plans for each council round.
Working with other offices of external research
to thoughtI for multi-year funding.
Partnering with the Center for Scientific Review to prepare
for the review of an increased number of research,
project grants, fellowships and career development awards.
As this program grows over the next several years and also
to learn from our other knowledge, partners have received bolus of funds.
What our best practices.
For example, using the
aging
Alzheimer's program and other models for using appropriation,
I see funding to inform how we move forward with this program.
one way that we can start building that
that pipe, that ecosystem of investigator initiated grants
is through the use of notices of special interest to broadly advertise,
and I intend to expand our climate change and health portfolio by
as well as leveraging existing programs to administrative supplements
or targeted additional funds to those that will be awarded
in fiscal year 20 to.
And asking, is this the provocation,
the catalyst to think about a flagship Centers of Excellence program that fosters
team science across disciplines with extensive community engagement,
as we've already mentioned.
Transdisciplinary team science does not happen overnight.
It takes time.
And one way to start processing that research extramural community
to to be able to respond to such integrated programs in the future
is to start with planning grants that would bring together
biomedical researchers, climate scientists, data scientists,
community partners to work together to start
thinking about and developing
a coordinated approach to to this to this problem
embedded of which could be opportunities for pilot projects and training
to eventually launch a Centers of Excellence program.
And also, as we take into the future plan
for other funding opportunity announcements and out years on key
research and training topics as the budget allows,
as many of you may or may not be awards.
Be aware that when there is a
base increase to an institute by law, there should also be a commensurate
increase in the small business,
innovative research, small business technology transfer program.
And to that end, in preparation for that,
the SBA, our representatives from the Executive
Committee, I seem to be working together to develop
a program for the use of funding opportunity
announcements and notices to develop tools, resources, approaches
to capture the effects of climate change and social impacts of extreme weather,
as well as to support adaptation or mitigation
strategies to minimize health hazards.
Impacts from.
From climate change.
You know, and it's probably mentioned multiple times already,
we're in the you know, this is a very broad concept
for a lot of elements that will be coming together
and we're just at the beginning stages.
And as NIH studies, we have many different tools available to us to
as we move forward to do deeper dives into areas of need for the fields,
for example, through the use and issuance of conference grants
and climate change, as well as NIH supported workshops and conferences.
And last, I'd just like to mention that in addition to the
the extramural activities that we've been talking about,
there's also been some initial discussion on building climate change
and health capacity and intramural research program.
At NIH.
We're considering possibly a modest sized program
identifying across areas across dioceses
where the pieces can include climate change
and health within their research program, as well as identify critical
needs for an interview or research program to conduct climate change and health
research in the future.
So this is just beginning.
There's a ton of work to do, and we're just all really excited
to be able to do that and be presenting this concept today.
But again, this is just the beginning and what are our next steps?
We will be continuing to strategize and develop
implementation planning for now and for in the future.
We'll do this by addressing the climate crisis with the urgency,
foresight, innovation and collaborative spirit that this challenge will require.
And I will start the capacity at home and abroad
and promote the best science, most impactful interventions,
with an emphasis on health equity and community engaged research.
Our program
will develop a sustainable model to support a conduit of needed health
researchers and research and promote collaborations
with other federal agencies, research organizations and communities.
Combined, these efforts will empower transdisciplinary solutions
that will advance human health in a rapidly changing world.
And I would just like to end with this quote by the U.N.
secretary general, which I really strongly feel really
depict really is the reason why we're here.
Climate change exacerbates chronic and contagious
diseases, worsens food and water shortages, increases
the risk of pandemics and aggravates mass displacement.
What's clear now is that the health effects
are worse than anticipated and that's already being felt.
With that, I want to thank you very much for your attention.
I will now turn it over to our council reviews doctors Goldman
while Sir Heide Zarella,
thank you again.
And oh, my goodness, thank you so much for that, Claudia
Thompson, that was a wonderful overview, and I think that I'm leading off briefly
and then we'll turn it over to my fellow reviewers,
and I should start by really congratulating the entire cast
and the other ices that are involved in this for having moved forward
so rapidly and with an approach that I think
is very methodologically sound.
I really have been impressed by the effort that's been made to understand
the entire landscape, the data collection that was done,
the entire scientific community had a chance to give input
into this process and the fact
that we have such strong involvement by a number of the ices
that we actually see the directors in this meeting with us.
That's a that's unusual and and it's a testament,
I think, to a process that truly is a collaborative process across the night,
which is something that I think we desperately need to see with an issue
that is of this level of complexity, as well as
an area where the science is Adobe.
It is still quite immature, I would argue.
So this is an excellent start, and I just wanted to start by saying that
I also wanted to say
that I think that the the framework that was laid out, which is that
the plan to be able to immediately move forward in recognition
of the way that the appropriations process is likely to work
and the need to get this effort
off the ground, while at the same time
wanting to establish a long term process that is sustainable.
I actually think that the
the the plan, as I understand it is, is striking the right note
in terms of of the the agency doing both of those things.
That is not easy at all, I think, to be focused on on a short-term
need as well as the longer term need and the level of urgency
that so many of us have with this issue.
I think I think it's great.
It's at least the way I hear it, that things will proceed on those two tracks.
And here I am again, violently agreeing,
but I also very much agree with the idea
that this funding is to catalyze the research.
It seems like a lot of money, it's not a lot of money,
even if all 100 million are appropriated.
This is a drop
in the bucket compared to what it's going to be needed.
But if the funding does catalyze the research,
then I think that there will be far bigger bang for buck than
just from the direct benefits to science from that money.
And I think that that's that's also something that I think it's important
and trying to understand how across the entire ecosystem
of the niche that the rollout of this can make that kind of catalytic impact.
I think that that the planning, the concept paper really, really set out
very well.
The other point with which I want to agree very strongly
is the concept of the need for multiyear commitments, multiyear funding.
That is going to be absolutely essential, this is an area
that is because these are.
Mostly new efforts that have not yet
grown big and strong out there and academic institutions
and other places, that sustained commitment
is going to be extremely important to be able to one,
just generate the commitment you need from the best scientists to jump into this
to be willing to take the risk to do this,
but also to assure to the NIH
that there will be positive results from this effort.
And so I think that the longer term
commitment is extremely important.
And so
I also heard a lot about about
looking at looking at the environmental issues,
the exposures, the social and behavioral issues.
I would also say in it
and it maybe could be highlighted a little more strongly in the concept paper.
I think there are also biological issues that are important.
The concept paper alludes to the fact
that there are groups that are more vulnerable because of age.
Dr. Bianchi mentioned children.
Thank you.
This is all pediatrician that he created at the beginning of life
there their vulnerabilities, but also as for aging,
there are vulnerable abilities, and I think that
that these biological differences are also important in bringing biology out
a little bit more strongly could be helpful.
So just kind of going through the concepts
that were presented as centers of excellence, a great idea.
I think that the NIH has had an excellent track record with building new fields
through the funding of Centers of Excellence
and particularly in an area like this that does require
transdisciplinary science that centers are going to be a way of doing that.
It's not to say that every center is going to be successful, but I think it is.
It is the way to break new ground in an area
incentivizing the interdisciplinary work.
The concept paper mentions climate scientists
and environmental and public health scientists
clinical research, as mentioned, but of course, for others as well.
And getting into areas around adaptation and mitigation,
there might be many areas of science
that centrists may want to bring in to the mix.
And you know how to make sure that the request for proposals
that got incentivize really broad collaboration or board efforts
that are very hard to do in academia and otherwise
to be able to bring in a bigger tent in terms of collaborators.
I also think that the centers could also
incentivize partnerships
with minority serving institutions and also with institutions
that are in areas of particularly high climate risk.
That may not be the areas that have the strongest scientific base to go after
some of this funding, but could be very important as collaborators.
So, you know,
along the Gulf Coast for hurricane
risk in forest fire areas or
up in Alaska, you know,
whether it's possible to encourage partnerships
that would bring organizations where there's some need to strengthen
the science base around what is going on in those communities?
one thing I wasn't clear about
as clear as I would have liked to have been is the commitment to training.
Even though it's on, it's on the
the the the conceptual diagram, the infographic.
It's in May that the working group produced, which was beautiful, by the way,
I thought that the fiction of what this is about.
But you know how the training fits into the picture
and how that will be supported, which is extremely important
that again, as we're building a new field of science.
But for me and concluding my piece of this,
I'm just very excited by the concept paper and the work that's been done to do it.
Not just the methodology, which is very slim,
but actually the results of it, which are very exciting and provide for me
a lot of hope that we will be able to see the emergence of this
new kind of trans disciplinary and very transformative research effort.
So thank you.
So maybe turning
to my colleagues to the maybe.
Yeah, thank you, Dr. Goldman.
Have talked to us the height next.
Thanks, Dr.
Ellison.
Good afternoon, first of all.
Congratulations on this extremely important and long overdue initiative.
Done right, it could be one of the most impactful
initiatives that NIH has ever launched,
as is well summarized
in both the concept and framework documents
and was just beautifully highlighted by Dr Thompson.
Climate change is one of the most profound and challenging forces
shaping health in our lifetimes.
Although an Ice Age, particularly A.H.
S and Idea have supported research on some
of the impacts of climate change on human health,
investments to date have been quite limited in comparison
to the magnitude of the need and the opportunity,
and have focused primarily on descriptive studies
with little intervention, research or implementation science.
So it is terrific to see this climate change and Health Initiative proposal.
In my view,
major strengths include structuring it as an NIH wide initiative,
recognizing the disproportionate impacts on marginalized populations in seizing
the opportunity to incorporate research to address
the equity issues up front.
Committing to using interdisciplinary
and intersectoral approaches.
And also to forging a foundation of interagency
and community partnerships and a whole new level sort of on steroids,
all of which will be absolutely critical
to the success of this initiative.
But each of these
will also be likely to be especially difficult in this case
for reasons that I'll come back to and in just a few minutes.
The other other strengths are the focus beyond descriptive studies
to intervention research and incorporating training and capacity building
both for scientists and community members.
But actually doing all of this
and doing it right is a pretty tall order.
So I'd like to share our thoughts in four areas.
Number one,
climate change and human health is a
quintessential global health issues.
Sort of.
A poster child for global health
causes and health
impacts of climate change are global.
Indeed, if we're really committed to addressing equity issues,
we have to acknowledge that the impacts are already hitting populations
in low and middle income countries disproportionately.
And indeed, there's actually little recognition
that soon climate change is likely to start undoing decades of progress
in global health in many of these countries.
Furthermore, many, if not most, of the solutions
will have to be tested globally and then iteratively refined for specific
populations using sophisticated implementation science methods.
But Global is strikingly under addressed
in the materials that were shared.
There
actually was very little explicit mention of research or research,
training and capacity building in LMI Seas.
Early sustained and robust involvement of LMC investigators, institutions
and partners will be absolutely essential to the success of this program.
Number two,
I think we should be asking what are the lessons about what works
from building successful research initiatives for other extremely urgent,
complex and challenging global health problems, especially in new
or very young research areas?
At the same time, we also have to recognize and be proactive
in dealing with the fact that research on climate change and health is different
in multiple ways, from traditional research areas at habit knowledge.
Many of the most important and innovative research
priorities mentioned in the strategic framework
focus on anticipating and reducing risks
at transnational or global scale.
They will require new methods, metrics and collaborations,
including large, multi-institutional and multi-country consortia.
You know, some of the key lessons from the HIV and COVID
research enterprises, which are arguably two other very high
profile complex challenging global health problems
are that interdisciplinary and intersectoral approaches
and community involvement have been both absolutely essential.
And if we're, to be perfectly honest,
often very challenging, elusive and inadequate.
We're
actually still not very good at bridging the differences in language,
worldview, funding streams, incentives and disincentives,
and resulting priorities that exist across disciplines, sectors and communities
and the disciplines and sectors that are needed for research
that will actually move the needle on climate change and health
are far more diverse and farther from what traditionally sits
within the health sector, then
NIEHS or other see usually support.
Timeframes also differ at both ends of the spectrum, on one hand,
there's the need to develop a rapid
a platform for rapid response research mechanisms to be able to do
health research quickly in the context of the kinds of humanitarian crises
that occur with climate related disasters or pandemics.
Actually, Nyad's Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases,
the Create network is grappling with exactly the same challenge.
On the other hand, timeframes for climate change can be long.
So time frames to demonstrate reduction in climate change, risks to health,
improved outcomes or co-benefits, maybe long as well.
So this means that support must be flexible
and timely for rapid response research opportunities
and also of sufficient duration, as Lynn was talking about
to rigorously evaluate relevant results of intervention research.
So these
considerations dictate, I think, a pressing need an opportunity
for innovative mechanisms and approaches, as well
as governance structures.
Therefore, number three is a few thoughts about mechanisms in the concept note,
I was actually sort of surprised to read
that the first goal is to increase the number of climate change
and health grant applications submitted to engage with a plan
to prepare for a future Centers of Excellence program.
The urgency and opportunity around climate change
and health demand that I address in NIH move quickly
to a network of research centers focusing at this intersection.
In fact, one of the best ways to build a pipeline
new interdisciplinary relationships and infrastructure
is in the context of doing research itself.
The urgent need for new types of research,
harnessing the expertize and synergistic creativity of investigators
from disciplines and sectors that have rarely collaborated before
makes this exactly the kind of situation in which
the institute , in close partnership with the other participating offices,
should issue an RFA that clearly articulates
those needs and calls for truly innovative research directions and frameworks
and new global, interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaborations.
This is not likely to happen as quickly
or as efficiently by relying on an investigator initiated mechanisms.
Whatever mechanism is
selected, at least three principles will be important.
It will be critical to provide enough lead time for submission
for investigators to assemble new interdisciplinary
and intersectoral partnerships both domestically and globally.
And this is something that definitely takes time to do well.
In addition, the grants must be adequately funded to do this work,
which frankly will be a heavy lift
if they're actually going to achieve the vision of this initiative.
And furthermore, real progress will require
major investments sustained over time, as has been mentioned previously, ideally
with extended grant periods, so more time can go into doing the research
rather than writing proposals.
Finally, governance related
to the centrality of a truly global perspective.
one of the key health impacts of climate change is the increased risk of pandemics
caused by novel or reemerging pathogens,
which frequently originate in low and middle income countries.
Therefore, an idea has to be
has a major role to play in this trans nature initiative
and must be represented on the Executive Committee of the Steering Committee.
The ability of this initiative to provide
actionable data for sustainable change and global scale
will also depend on a new level of involvement of other U.S.
government agencies and global health organizations.
From the get go,
the true commitment to the interdisciplinary
and intersectoral approaches that will have legs means that
the governance structure should include in some substantive way.
Several of the other twelve U.S.
government agencies participating in the U.S.
Global Change Research Program.
For example, CDC, USAID knowa
Department of Agriculture Department of Energy.
Finish.
This initiative also provides a unique opportunity for impact
by taking a global development perspective that links and translates
research and research capacity in low and middle income countries
on health with work to strengthen evidence based programs
and policies
to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in areas such as eliminating hunger,
ensuring access to clean energy, clean water and sanitation.
So strong consideration should be given
to including W.H.O., at least in liaison
capacity.
In all of this, I'm going to stop there and again,
congratulations on this landmark initiative
and thank you so much for this opportunity to comment.
I'm cheering you on from here.
Thank you, Dr.
Watson, Hyde and Dr.
Goldman, both for your comment.
Next, we have doctors, Aurelia.
All right.
Hi again,
I'm just going to provide
several comments on an incremental basis
because my colleagues actually provided most of the feedback.
I, first of all, need to congratulate this initiative.
It was needed.
It is needed and it will need to be implemented and sustained.
So three comments regarding
I boosted the
strategic framework, which I love,
and I actually loved this initiative so far
because it's really rational and places
several reasons for research activities,
as well as for transdisciplinary research.
But as
Dr. Goldman mentioned, there's
sort of like maybe missing words not necessarily the best,
but the biological impact is not necessarily there.
For example, the AP genetic changes in infants
born of mothers exposed to extreme cold.
So there's environmental changes that produce
some genetic impact and may have impact on future generations.
So that part was not directly addressed, but I don't think that's really
needed to be so specific about what anyway being an obstetrician.
I really thought that that was something that we needed
to make sure that we have.
I believe that the Centers of Excellence
will be great as a catalyst,
but they need to make sure you need to make sure
that they have partnerships with investigators and groups
in the affected areas, in the affected areas by climate change.
And probably not all the specific
vulnerable populations will be amenable or
will be able to participate or be reached by these Centers of Excellence.
Or you need to make sure that you have within either
geographic distributions areas that are vulnerable to specific
climate disasters or activities you need to have.
So some sort of distribution, and I know you will, because that
is part of the framework.
And thirdly,
one area of concern that I have is that.
We're living in a world that has a lot of communication
and miscommunication, and
this is a generation that we're dealing with
that is exposed to all kinds of messages right
and wrong and and messages regarding climate change
have been all over positive and negative, true and false.
And so somehow these
this initiative needs to pay attention to those messages
to make sure that we have not only the data, the
justification, they think, their actions
and the strategies to offset most of these or some of the impact on health.
But we also need to make sure that we have strategies to deal with
data or information misinformation.
I think that's very important.
You can do the best thing in research and then communities might misinterpret
this as we have had experiences with vaccines
and with HIV and with all kinds of other health issues
that people see them with their perspective,
not related to health, but related to other local issues.
So this needs to be somehow, maybe later on or maybe planned in advance
that misinformation, information or data should be addressed.
I think this is a great,
a great initiative.
I am glad that these institutes are partnering and I think this is
something that will history will look at this initiative.
Maybe day by by these people that are here, these institute directors,
and they are my heroes right now from from where I'm reading
because this is something that certainly we need
just in our country and all around.
So those are my $0.03.
Thank you, Dr.
Zarella.
And now I'd like to open it up to council members for discussion,
if you'd like to make a comment or you have a question.
Please use the reactions box to raise your hand.
There's a raised hand feature there, and I'll call on you.
And so first, we have Dr.
Perez.
Please.
I thank you so much for this presentation
and for distributing the materials beforehand, because I think that this is
a tremendous initiative and really, really needs
to be successful for the well-being of all human race, basically.
So in that note,
I'm going to make three observations
that I think that the proposal will benefit from looking at.
And the first one is a.
An apparent absence of attention
to the political economy of climate change.
You know, after all, we have research and information
and documentation of on climate change since the 1980s, at least, but
that has not been translated into policy.
So I am afraid that this idea
can rest on
a wrong assumption that the most research you have,
the more action you will have at the policymaking side.
And that is
not documented by the paper historically.
So we will need to pay more attention to macro institutions
like the political economy of a policy processes
to be able to address what it is a wicked issue or a wicked problem.
And that is the second point.
I think that the the proposal will benefit
from looking at two frameworks the framework of
the science of team
science for the methodology of a trend
translational and transdisciplinary research.
You know, we all talk about transdisciplinary, but
I have seen very few examples of real transdisciplinary work,
and I think that research groups will need a lot of guidance
in the methodology of conducting a
transdisciplinary research in these areas.
And the second framework will be
the the concept of
wicked problems.
You know, climate change
has many stakeholders at the global regional,
local levels, national levels
and have a many, many interests, political
and economic interests involved in those decision making processes.
And that increases
uncertainty at a level
that our traditional science is very uncomfortable dealing with.
So I think that if
we pay attention to these theoretical frameworks
will help us designing a process and a
context in which this research
can actually be very, very useful.
And the third point I want to make
is that in terms of capacity building, I really like the focus
on capacity building, but I'm afraid
that is often directed to the wrong people
because we tend to assume that the only people that need
capacity building is community members, for example, or community leadership.
And actually, many communities have it right and they are very resilient.
They have very good behavioral
and environmental behaviors, et cetera, et cetera.
But these our policymakers and public administrators
and public officials, the ones that need capacity building.
And I didn't see any strong
outreach and capacity building component
to the stakeholders
that are keeping us in this mess in the in the first place.
And I have a couple of more, but I'm going to stop here.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments and please if we can just keep our comments brief.
We want to get to a four or 5:00 p.m.
and we want to make be respectful of everyone's time here.
I know that
this is such an exciting initiative and we have much to say about it.
Dr. Penny.
And then Dr.
Cavanaugh got the right and then back to her shoulder.
first of all, I wanted to wish Claudia and her team congratulations.
I think this is a really important initiative.
And I think it was very thoughtfully put together.
And this is certainly a good place to start building.
The comment I wanted to make was actually on preparedness.
A lot of what we're planning to do is reactionary to climate change
as opposed to being prepared for climate change projections.
And that brings me back to the concept of
actually transdisciplinary research
and especially working with scientists and climatologists.
I think we all
know from the Glasgow conference that took place a few weeks ago
that despite people's best promises, promises aren't kept
and therefore we need to start modeling different scenarios
in terms of what will climate change look like
and its effects on health if those promises are kept?
And what will happen if they're not kept?
And I know different countries have different deadlines for meeting
emissions controls, but I think we do need that modeling to take place
so that we can actually direct limited resources to the areas
most affected. OK.
Thank you, Dr. Penny.
Dr. Cavanaugh and then Dr.
Wright, please.
Thank you, Gary, and want to also echo
my support for this initiative, and congratulations
to Claudia and the rest of the team for putting this together.
one thing that I thought might address this issue of how long it's
going to put together take to put together the centers of excellence is to take
advantage of the infrastructure that's already there and HHS and other eye
sees regarding already research centers that have
a lot of multidisciplinary
expertize to put forward.
And I'm just wondering whether or not
taking some of the centers that already exist.
I'm thinking of, for instance, of the core centers, Superfund centers,
the oceans and human health centers and putting that expertize to use.
And with these centers, be able to apply, for instance, for supplementary
information to jumpstart this process
and get people oriented towards
putting together these centers of excellence.
Thank you, Claudia, do you want to respond to that?
Sure, thanks, Harry, for that.
I think one of the things we talked about on the first
slide was one of the activities that we did
launch was to look across the nature of all the programs, centers,
et cetera, that are that are already in place
that could potentially be leveraged and could shift towards climate change.
And how so?
Your comment about administrative supplements to existing programs,
especially, you know, for receiving funding funds early in some time in 2002
might be something that we've talked about and could consider.
So thank you for bringing it up and reinforcing reinforcing that.
Thank you.
I'm just looking at the clock.
We have five minutes left and we have to get a vote in before 5:00.
That's right.
OK, so I want to remind everyone that
if you have comments or questions, you can send them to me in an email.
After the meeting, and we'll make sure that they're addressed.
You can also use the chat feature to add your comments as well.
We'll
save the chats for this meeting
and adjust accordingly.
We'll take one more comment.
Doctor, right?
And then we'll need to take a vote.
I'll just send an email in the interest of time. OK?
And one more Dr.
Hertz-Picciotto.
And yes, we'll take a look.
Yeah, really briefly, I just I echo the chorus of congratulations
on this incredible initiative that is so timely
and well known to early.
And also, I just wanted to to mention that
I think in terms of areas and directions
and this emphasis on Cross Institute, not just across institutes
within NIH, but across other federal and other agencies
and organizations, I think really has tremendous potential.
So I congratulate you on that as well.
And then and then the other point I just wanted to make is that we can
I think we can be
thinking about
the ways in which we can research policies
and the impacts of different policies which are happening as we speak
with different cities, counties, states
taking very different approaches towards what they incentivize and what they don't
incentivize with regard to whether it's mitigation or adaptation.
And of course, there's a there's a there's a real overlap between
those two that when we mitigate greenhouse
gas emissions, we are also reducing air pollution and all those other things.
So ways in which we could be using niche resources
to understand the policies that at a large scale
make might be making bigger differences than just promoting behavioral changes.
So that's that's yeah. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you all for. For your comments.
Thank you, Claudia, for that wonderful presentation.
I'd like to now ask
for a motion for approval of this concept.
Simply removed.
OK. Dr.
Goldman and seconded by Dr. Taberna.
Thank you.
And now I'd like for you
to vote in your electronic counsel
book Vote whether to approve or disapprove.
And Leslie, you let me know when everyone is voting.
I thought, Oh, I'll be right there, right?
Yeah. Hi.
I think someone needs to mute.
Area see that there are a number of jets that are coming in,
so we'll want to make sure that we capture the chat box. Yes.
Stop the the Zoom session.
Yes, we're we're going to make sure that we save the chat.
And again, if you have any additional comments
or questions, please make sure that you emailed me
and we'll make sure that they're addressed.
And Rebecca,
thank you for the chat, and thanks to Katrina for the chat.
John for the chat.
OK, Liz, how are we doing?
Things coming in electronic
Adobe to her, she recalled her daughter pinning and data,
right? OK.
Good, good.
OK, thank you, everyone.
Dr. Woychik
OK, well, thank you for to everyone.
We are.
We're going to be adjourning here right on time.
I want to especially thank all of the reviewers.
I thought your comments were spot on.
We're going to try to.
Well, we're going to capture them
and we're going to have an executive committee meeting later on this week.
And so we're going to try to distribute the comments that were made
during this, this council session
to the executive committee members, and we'll have a chance to discuss them.
So, Dr.
Clement, anything you want to comment on before we adjourn and we're right at 5:00.
Just want to say thank you to everybody for your very thoughtful comments.
We really appreciate all of your support.
Stay tuned.
We'll be bringing back progress as we keep going.
So very, very important initiative.
And again, I want to thank my fellow IOC directors, too,
for joining us for today's council and for your active engagement,
providing governments for this critically important NIH wide initiative.
I also want to thank actually
we didn't have a chance to do that, but Josh Rosenthal and Aubrey Miller,
together with the working group they have, they've spent a lot of that
background work happened over the course of the last several months.
Adobe Chekov of Aubrey and Josh.
So thank you for
what was clearly a lot of very well
received works that it's been done.
So thanks to everyone.
And we really appreciate your time.
So with that, this special session of council is now officially adjourned.