Team Research

The One Georgia Climate and Health Extension Center pre-seed grant would connect experts across climate, health, medical, and ecological sciences at UGA with our statewide Cooperative Extension Service to design a model program for healthier, more resilient communities. Recently, this group of faculty came together for the first time to submit a letter of intent for a large funding opportunity at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF; bwfund.org). In the process, we discovered common interests and opportunities for collaboration that clearly deserve further development. We believe the idea is worth cultivating. This pre-seed grant would strengthen our submission if we are invited to prepare a proposal for BWF (due in December), but it would also help cultivate the idea for future funding opportunities. 

The group will focus on improving health outcomes in Georgia’s most climate-vulnerable communities, which are largely rural and have lower life expectancy, greater environmental exposure, fewer resources, and limited healthcare and physical infrastructure. 

The idea of connecting interdisciplinary research with service and teaching is central to UGA’s mission. The proposed seed grant would bring the team together more formally to envision a first-of-its-kind, Cooperative Extension delivery-based approach to addressing the health impacts of climate change and extreme weather across the state of Georgia. Leveraging our strengths in clinical, population, and environmental health sciences, as well as climatology, ecology, engineering, and sustainability, we build on UGA’s unique position as a land-grant institution with local Extension agents embedded in all 159 counties. Our expertise in climate and environmental research provides a strong foundation for understanding how health outcomes vary across Georgia’s diverse geographies, climates, and populations. We aim to foster collaboration among communities, researchers, Extension agents, and the new School of Medicine, thereby establishing a lasting focus on climate and health training and a continuum of translational efforts stretching from climate science to population health. We plan to explore how a Center would integrate and network existing climate and health programs under a unified structure, serving as a connective hub and model. We anticipate using Pre-Seed funding to support 1) travel to key communities in the State to begin conversations with stakeholders about community specific needs and support around health, climate, and weather; 2) engaging external partners either through visits to UGA to meet with collaborating faculty or facilitating focus groups in communities; 3) a student worker to assist with coordinating the group and activities. 

Climate is a universal factor affecting health, but our ability to fully characterize and attribute health outcomes to climate, and thereby better project and mitigate future impacts, has been limited by a siloed approach. Our goal is to develop a Center to provide leadership and a new framework for interdisciplinary research, innovative methods of collecting and integrating health and environmental data at appropriate scales, and develop predictive models, cross-disciplinary training, and active collaboration with local communities most affected by climate change. Recent catastrophic weather events have prompted a growing national interest in embedding climate resilience into trusted, local Extension programming. 

While efforts have begun to connect Extension with public health, no state has yet integrated climate, health, and Extension into a unified model. We will build on UGA’s existing strengths and position Georgia as a scalable and replicable model of integrated climate-health research, training, and translation through Cooperative Extension, serving Georgia’s most vulnerable communities, with the potential to inform national efforts. 

Team Lead

Yager, Patricia
pyager@uga.edu
College: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Marine Sciences 

Team Members

Lipp, Erin K
elipp@uga.edu
College: Public Health
Department: Environmental Health Sciences

Sheperd, James Marshall
marshgeo@uga.edu
College: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Geography

Penn, Allisen
Allisen.Penn@uga.edu
College: Family and Consumer Sciences
Department: Office of the Dean

Brownfield, Erica
Erica.Brownfield@uga.edu
College: School of Medicine
Department: Internal Medicine

Rohani, Pejman
rohani@uga.edu
College: Odum School of Ecology
Department: Ecology of Infectious Diseases 

Mochel, Jonathan
jpmochel@uga.edu
College: College of Veterinary Medicine
Department: Systems Pharmacology 

Fuller, Christina
Christina.Fuller@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School Of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural, And Mechanical Engineering

Carver, Scott
Scott.Carver@uga.edu
College: Odum School of Ecology
Department: Ecology of Infectious Diseases

Grundstein, Andrew
andrewg@uga.edu
College: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Geography

Renzi-Hammond, Lisa
lrenzi@uga.edu
College: College of Public Health
Department: Institute of Gerontology

Capps, Krista
kcapps@uga.edu
College: Odum School of Ecology
Department: Savannah River Ecology Laboratory