Burroughs Wellcome Fund Climate + Health Excellence (CHEX) Centers

Program Summary

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has announced Climate + Health Excellence (CHEX) Centers awards of up to $10 million (5 years @ $2M/year, maximum) to increase awardees’ capacity for innovation at the interface of climate and health by enhancing research collaborations, training professional students and valuing outward focus/communications. The Centers will facilitate collaboration between fields and organizations that aim to understand and mitigate the impact of climate change on human health. UCI can only submit one application, though individual faculty may also participate in a consortium with other institutions.

In general, this award will support institutions or consortia that are already moving toward establishing themselves as centers of excellence for understanding climate change’s impact on human health and for leadership in climate education OR public communication around climate and health.

Applications from institutions just starting to integrate Climate + Health into their planning will not be competitive.

Internal Application Process

Up to three awards will be made over two rounds of competition. This will be an extremely competitive program. We believe that UCI’s best chance of success is if we have an application that includes faculty from across campus and external partners with already established relationships. We encourage you to apply jointly.

Please apply by Tuesday, June 3rd by submitting through the UCI Review site,  addressing the following requirements and questions:

Project Title
Do not exceed 150 characters.

Questions

1. What theme(s) connecting scholarship and practice in climate and in health are at the center of your proposed Center of Excellence?
   250 characters max including spaces and punctuation
2. How will you structure/organize your Climate and Health Center of Excellence?
   1200 characters max, including spaces and punctuation
3. How will work supported by this award change your organization’s or organizations’ capacity to sustain basic and applied strategies for improving human health challenges associated with climate change?
   1200 characters max, including spaces and punctuation
4. How do you plan to reach across organizational units in your institution and partnering organizations to include scholars and practitioners whose fields have traditionally not been part of science, technology, or health-focused efforts?
   1200 characters max, including spaces and punctuation
5. What about the way you’re approaching Climate and Health gives you confidence that your work will make significant practical improvements to the impact of climate change on human health in the next 10-20 years?
   1200 characters max, including spaces and punctuation
6. Please list the names/departments/Schools of potential collaborators and include 1-2 sentences that describe the role that each partner will play in the proposed center.

Notification will be made in time for the nominee to meet the August 7 LOI deadline.

Full details of the call can be found here and a summary of the CHEX webinar, the call pdf and additional information are here.

For questions regarding the CHEX program, please contact Heather Fessler in Corporate & Foundation Relations (CFR), and for questions regarding the internal competition review process, please contact Mike Gallo in the Office of Research