LAUSR

Climate change represents one of the greatest challenges to humans this century. Heat waves and wildfires in the West, unseasonably cold weather leading to massive infrastructure failure in Texas, and the increasing frequency and destructiveness of hurricanes in the South underline this concerning phenomenon. Its widespread public health impact, particularly on vulnerable individuals, has been acknowledged at the highest levels of the federal government. Moreover, the health-related effects of climate change in general and natural disasters specifically are increasingly recognized, exacerbating risks from wide ranging conditions such as hypertension and depression, to infectious disease risk. However, scientific evidence to inform mitigation of the health-related effects of climate change and natural disasters is scant. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest public funder of research related to health. To understand the current state of public health funding directed towards climate change and natural disasters, we quantify and describe trends in NIH funding by institute/center related to their health-related outcomes over the past 20 years in relation to their entire allocated research funding.