Athena Bertolino awarded for outstanding community impact
The UW College of the Environment awarded Athena Bertolino, Future Rivers program manager and member of EarthLab core team, the 2024 award for outstanding community impact. The Awards Committee was impressed with the breadth and depth of Athena’s work and the impact that she has, which was highlighted in her nomination letters. Her nominators note that she is absolutely essential to the success and impact of Future Rivers; she is completely dedicated to making the UW and College of the Environment a world leader in transdisciplinary environmental science research and education; her extraordinary commitment to excellence; and her ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice through programs, trainings and continuous improvement opportunities.
UW EarthLab Announces 2024-25 Innovation Grants Projects for Climate & Social Justice
UW EarthLab awards $400,000 to develop actionable research at the intersection of climate change & social justice, making a positive impact on people’s lives and livelihoods
March 28,2024
Today EarthLab announced that five community-centered teams have been selected for the 2024-25 Innovation Grants program. Each team will receive $80,000 to research and develop new and actionable knowledge on community-driven projects at the intersection of climate change and social justice. To date, EarthLab has awarded nearly two million dollars in Innovation Grant funding to 29 transdisciplinary teams across five cohorts.
The Innovation Grants Program invests in collaborations that span academic disciplines, engage multiple sectors and center community questions that are taking equitable action on climate change. This year, 33 teams submitted letters of intent to apply to the Request for Proposals (RFP), of which 12 full proposals were submitted. Proposals were evaluated by a 10-member review committee that included faculty and staff from several disciplines and community partners from outside of the university.
Winning project teams include faculty from a range of disciplines at the University of Washington, including environmental & forest sciences, landscape architecture, civil & environmental engineering, French & Italian studies, marine & environmental affairs, international studies, global health, architecture, management & organization, and more. Partners from beyond the university include Tribal leaders and communities, city governments, community organizers and other universities.
“One of the greatest challenges for addressing climate change in my community is finding partnerships to conceptualize and materialize solutions,” shared Leydiana Menacho, Community Lead for the project Healing Amazonian Soils with Science and Indigenous Artisanry: Implementing Community-Based Composting System in the Urban Amazon. “I believe the EarthLab grant provide[s] us with the opportunity to consolidate a team and the support needed to refine and implement our ideas to introduce composting systems in the Amazon for the benefits of our ecosystems and people.”
In addition to the funds awarded, Innovation Grant recipients receive administrative and communications support throughout the eighteen month award period. All teams are part of our fifth grants cohort, which are workshop-style meetings designed to share resources on interdisciplinary and community-engaged research, create the opportunity for co-learning and networking, and to provide a structured space to work collaboratively on their projects. Final products intended to make a positive impact on people and communities are due by September 25, 2025.
Learn more about the Innovation Grants program here and check back often for news regarding the Cohort 1, Cohort 2, Cohort 3 & Cohort 4 funded projects.
This Year’s Funded Projects
In the Hands of Future Generations: Tribal Youth and UW Students Responding to Climate Grief through Restoration Action, Research, and Video Storytelling
Catalyzing Just Circular Communities: A Feasibility Study of a Large-Scale Anaerobic Biodigester to Generate Hyper-local, Community-Owned Clean Energy Infrastructure in Seattle’s South Park
Fish, fire, food, and floodplains: Healing place and people
Healing Amazonian Soils with Science and Indigenous Artisanry: Implementing Community-Based Composting System in the Urban Amazon
Life, In Spite of It All: Water, Wetlands, and Reclamation in a Changing Climate
EarthLab Presents: Visual Arts Contest
I have always wanted my art to service my people — to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential. We have to create an art for liberation and for life” – Elizabeth Catlett
EarthLab is excited to announce our first-ever UW Undergraduate Art Competition! This is your opportunity to participate in one of the original forms of human expression through art by creating an original piece of art that answers the question: What does environmental and/or climate justice mean to you and your community? Undoubtedly, each of our unique cultures, identities and historical experiences ensure there is no singular answer to this question.
We believe in the authority and co-existence of both research and diverse knowledge and storytelling systems which exist – including shared and lived experiences, oral histories, art, culture, in any setting within and outside academia. Diverse voices must be heard to truly understand just what environmental and climate justice means to not only us as individuals, but the very communities we belong to and steward.
Whether you express your perspective through a painting, digital art, sketch, or drawing, we invite you to submit your art and start a dialogue connected to your interpretation of one or both of the following definitions:
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: All people and communities have the right to equal environmental protection under the law, and the right to live, work and play in communities that are safe, healthy and free of life-threatening conditions. Source: Columbia University. Definition attributed to Robert Bullard.
CLIMATE JUSTICE: To ensure communities, individuals and governments have substantive legal and procedural rights relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment and the means to take or cause measures to be taken within their national legislative and judicial systems, where necessary, at regional and international levels, to mitigate sources of climate change and provide for adaptation to its effects in a manner that respects human rights. Source: International Bar Association
The winning art piece will be featured in tandem with an upcoming data visualization (known as the EarthLab Network Snapshot Project) in 2024. Together, they will support efforts to share EarthLab’s impact in engaging diverse communities in environmental and climate change research and training.
Art submissions are due by 05/01/24. Winners will be announced in mid-May 2024.
The details:
Submission Materials
Selection Criteria
Contest Rules
Virtual Information Session
Prizes
U.S. research funding on health effects of climate change inadequate
Although changes in the Earth’s climate are already harming the health of millions of people in the United States and abroad, the federal government is spending little on research on how to address the health effects of climate change, a new study concludes.
“We’ve systematically underinvested in this rapidly emerging health threat, and it has hamstrung our ability to respond,” said Dr. Jeremey Hess, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington School of Public Health and of global health and emergency medicine at the UW School of Medicine in Seattle, one of the authors of the paper.
The paper appears in the current issue of the journal Health Affairs.
Hess wrote the paper with co-authors from Harvard University, Stony Brook University, Yale University, and the University Health Network in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Cecilia Sorensen, director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University, was the paper’s lead author.
n the study, the researchers determined the amount of research funding the U.S. government provided to outside organizations, such as universities and research institutes, from 2010 to 2020 to specifically address the health effects of climate change. Such extramural grants make up the vast bulk of U.S.-funded scientific research.
The authors of the Health Affairs paper found that during this 11-year period, the federal government funded only 102 grants that addressed the health outcomes associated with climate change. The total amount provided added up to just $58.7 million, or roughly $5.3 million per year.
For comparison, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, just one of the federal agencies included in the study, awarded more than $33 billion in grants just in 2022. The NIH has published information about its grant funding on its website.
“Less than $60 million in more than a decade is a minuscule investment for a problem that is expected to have a global impact within the next few years on the scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic,” Hess said.
The researchers noted that ten climate-related disasters in the United States in 2012 alone were estimated to had led to more than $10 billion direct and indirect costs. In addition, the health effects of fossil fuel-related air pollution is estimated to cost the U.S. $820 billion a year.
Hess, who is an emergency medicine physician at UW Medicine, says the impact of climate change is already apparent in the nation’s emergency rooms.
“Emergency care providers provide care to everyone, anytime, for anything, so we see what’s prevalent in our area, particularly among vulnerable populations,” Hess said.
“In the Northwest, we are seeing a very clear signal of climate change with illnesses due to heatwaves, wildfires and wildfire smoke,” he said, while in other regions of the country healthcare providers are seeing a rise in injuries due to increased strength and frequency of storms and a rise in infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue. The impact abroad is even more dramatic,” he noted.
The study’s authors call for more grant funding to support efforts to develop effective healthcare and policy interventions that will minimize the health risks and reduce health-related economic impacts of climate change, especially those affecting vulnerable populations and marginalized ethnic and racial groups.
“We need to invest in research to understand who is being highly affected by climate change and how to protect those in these vulnerable communities,” Hess said.
“While more funding is needed to understand how climate change affects health, we already know enough to start focusing now on identifying and evaluating interventions and how to implement those interventions effectively,” he continued.
“In many areas, we know what to do about climate change, but we need to move things along much more quickly than we are moving now,” Hess added.
“Lastly, we need to invest in training,” Hess said. “We support our Ph.D. and postdoctoral students through research grants and when there are no research grants available, we can’t train people.
Currently, we don’t have many people trained in climate change and health, it’s a particular skill set and because we haven’t invested in this area, we don’t have the researchers and practitioners we need.”