Anga Center for Climate Justice, Health Equity, and Community Wellbeing

PROJECT SUMMARY East Africa (EA) is one of the most vulnerable regions of Africa to climate change (CC) and related extreme weather events (EWEs). Climate change will exacerbate already existing temperature extremes and changes in precipitation in this region, and these environmental changes are likely to have a profound impact on health and well-being. Even though countries and communities that contribute the least to CC are often those most affected, there is limited inclusion of these communities in CC and health research. Residents of climate- vulnerable communities, in particular, have a profound stake in the global community's understanding of CC and health and strategies to adapt. In fact, they are key to developing action-oriented solutions that address CC- related health inequities. The central theme of the Anga Center for Climate Justice, Health Equity, and Community Well-being in East Africa is to improve climate justice, health equity, and community well-being by exploring climate-related health and well-being and interventions to strengthen them through building transdisciplinary research capacity and fostering sustained community engagement and empowerment in climate vulnerable communities and marginalized populations. The Anga Center will be led by a multinational, multistage, transdisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in social work, climate science, climate adaptation and mitigation, environmental engineering and science, public health, biostatistics, psychiatry, community development, intervention science, community-based participatory research, and women and gender studies and a strong history of ethical, community-engaged research in the EA region. With a commitment to community engagement and empowerment, the Center aims to support communities with infrastructure, technical skills, knowledge sharing, and career opportunities in CC, and we will work to cultivate multi-directional information sharing, targeted trainings, capacity building, and key opportunities for networking with a diverse set of stakeholders. We will achieve our overall goal by: (1) fostering research that promotes climate justice, health equity, and community well-being through explorations of the impacts of CC and related events and interventions that minimize negative impacts and improve overall health and well-being in climate-vulnerable communities and marginalized populations in EA; (2) Building local and regional CC and health research and science capacity by fostering long-term transdisciplinary and community partnerships, enhancing local data collection and methodologies, and providing capacity building through knowledge sharing; and (3) empowering communities most vulnerable to climate change through sustained, committed, multi- directional relationships, community-engaged research, and efforts to enhance community well-being. The Center's combined aims of improving health and well-being, building research capacity, and empowering communities will create a sustainable system of research that will advance climate justice, health equity, and community well-being and contribute to critical CC and health science in EA and globally.