date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 16:15:48 +0000
from: Tony McMichael <tony.mcmichael@lshtm.ac.uk>
subject: MRC/NERC application - URGENT, etc.
to: andy.hall@lshtm.ac.uk, laura.rodrigues@lshtm.ac.uk, katrin.kuhn@lshtm.ac.uk,  clive.davies@lshtm.ac.uk, rssmith@phls.co.uk, c.bentham@uea.ac.uk,  m.hulme@uea.ac.uk, sari.kovats@lshtm.ac.uk, a.haines@ucl.ac.uk,  astrid.fletcher@lshtm.ac.uk, paul.wilkinson@lshtm.ac.uk

Dear colleagues, 

Further to my email of yesterday, I have drafted the following three sections for our 
Outline Proposal. Please let me know of suggested changes by Thursday 28.1.99.

But don't let that interfere with your own drafting efforts - a one-page AND a 
quarter-page abstract of (each of) your project(s). To be emailed ASAP to 
<s.kovats@lshtm.ac.uk>.

Tony McM

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       PROPOSAL FOR AN MRC/NERC-FUNDED  COOPERATIVE GROUP:
 
      "CLIMATE CHANGE, OZONE DEPLETION AND HEALTH"

SUMMARY (c.250 words)

We face an unprecedented period of global environmental change due to the now systemic 
aggregated impact of human activities. These largescale changes include greenhouse gas 
accumulation in the lower atmosphere (anticipated to alter world climate conditions and 
patterns) and depletion of ozone in the stratosphere. Recent comprehensive scientific 
reviews have described the range of potential health impacts of climate change (IPCC, 
1996; McMichael et al., 1996), including via thermal stresses, extreme weather events, 
and changes in transmission patterns of infectious diseases. Reviews in relation to ozone 
depletion (DETR(UK), 1997; UNEP, 1998) point to increased risks of skin cancer, 
certain eye disorders, and altered immune functioning.

We propose a set of ten projects, as newly-funded component grants. Those projects, of 
three kinds, will: (i) estimate ongoing and future changes in human exposures to climatic 
conditions and to ultraviolet irradiation (particularly within the UK); (ii) describe 
relations between recent or current variations in climate (thermal stresses, floods, 
changes in mean climatic conditions) or in UVR exposures and selected health outcomes 
(mortality, morbidity, biological change); and (iii) develop models of future health 
impacts of anticipated/modelled changes in climate/UVR exposures. (See also the 
appended table.)

The Cooperative Group will have its health sciences base at the London School of Hygiene 
and Tropical Medicine and its environmental sciences base (climatology, air quality, 
ultraviolet radiation) at the University of East Anglia. This initiative would formalise and 
greatly extend preexisting contacts and minor collaborations between those groups. 
Further, the set of projects would bring in a range of other expert collaborators, 
especially in the fields of ultraviolet radiation physics (Durham University), hydrology 
(Middlesex University), infectious diseases (CDSC), disaster medicine (University 
College London), ophthalmology and immunology (various).  

SIGNIFICANCE/AIMS

Climate scientists predict with increasing confidence that the accumulation of 
human-made greenhouse gases will induce climatic changes over the course of coming 
decades. Climate variability may also increase. Stratospheric ozone depletion has been 
evident since the 1970s; current predictions are that it will continue until around 2020, 
followed by slow recovery. The consequent incremental ultraviolet flux is greatest during 
the winter-spring transition months (approximating a seasonal 20% increase in 
northern Europe).

The scale and complexity of these two changes, and the diversity of anticipated potential 
health impacts, require an interdisciplinary research effort. That effort will encompass 
both empirical research and the future-oriented modelling of likely outcomes. No such 
coordinated research effort has yet been undertaken in the UK.

This Cooperative Group aims to:

1.	Establish a close, synergistic, working relationship between key disciplines in the 
environmental sciences and health sciences, from several institutions, to achieve 
high-quality description and estimation of present and future health impacts from 
climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion.

2.	Extend and strengthen the information base about causal relationships, which will 
allow, in turn, improvement of predictive modelling techniques.

3.	Generate, where possible, quantitative estimates of the future health impacts of 
scenarios of climate change and ozone depletion. Such estimates provide an important 
guide to future priorities in research, surveillance and social policy development.


VALUE FOR MONEY

This research topic area clearly needs affirmative action support. (Its development in the 
UK is lagging behind the equivalent research effort in various other western countries.) 
This proposal for a Cooperative Group, in response to the MRC/NERC initiative, has 
brought together several institutions and disciplines in a way that is essential to this 
complex research topic. Both the LSHTM and UEA have, separately, been involved as 
leaders in the national and international efforts to define the conceptual and 
methodological development of the health impact and climate-environmental change 
dimensions of this topic. Via that developmental process, during the 1990s, it has become 
clear that there is now a need to embark on specific empirical and modelling studies to 
carry this effort forwards. 

This proposed set of projects will bring together the UK's considerable strengths in the 
climate-environmental and health sciences, drawing also on several external 
collaborations with able and experienced researchers. Further, there would be important 
synergies (and economies of coordination) between various of these projects. Project 4, 
for example, would provide invaluable high-quality input into several of the other 
projects. We believe that this Cooperative Group, if funded, would achieve a productive 
research collaboration of considerable international stature and importance.

---------------
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From: A.J. McMichael
Professor of Epidemiology
Department of Epidemiology and Population Health
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Keppel Street
London  WC1E 7HT   
U.K.
Ph:  +44 171 927.2254
Fax: +44 171 580.6897
email: t.mcmichael@LSHTM.ac.uk
Web: http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/eps/eu/euintro.htm                                                                                                                                                              
