Group members

Climate Change and Health Intervention Working Group

Group members

Group leader

Bunker, Aditi PhD, MPH

Aditi is an epidemiologist and coordinates the Climate Change and Health Intervention Working Group at HIGH. Her research tests climate change adaptation and mitigation interventions to assess how they affect population health, environmental and economic outcomes. Using experimental and quasi-experimental designs, she conducts large-scale causal impact evaluations on interventions in the housing, urban design, infrastructure and food sectors to identify how they affect outcomes, including infectious disease. She uses novel approaches to co-design technology based solutions for populations including growth hacking, citizen science approaches and hackathons. Knowledge generated through Aditi’s research will inform governments, citizens, private sector and donors on uptake of adaptation and mitigation interventions with co-benefits for health, environment and the economy. She enjoys developing public-private partnerships and working with government to scale and enable technology transfer of proven interventions to climate-vulnerable communities.

Aditi is the recipient of multiple Horizon Europe grants and a German Science Foundation (DFG) grant. In the Horizon Europe project Food systems that support transitions to hEalthy And Sustainable dieTs (FEAST), Aditi is a principal investigator. Her contribution involves co-designing novel technology-based solutions through open innovation, scaling solutions such as community action platforms and eco-food maps and evaluating the causal impact of technologies such as the myLabel app for promoting the transition to healthier and more sustainable diets, particularly in vulnerable groups. Aditi leads a work package on evaluating local interventions for resilience to zoonotic disease in the Horizon Europé-funded project Infectious disease decision-support tools and alert systems to build climate resilience to emerging health threats (IDAlert). Here, her research tests the effectiveness of nature based solutions, citizen science tools and urban design changes (i.e., mosquito-proof drain infrastructure changes in Barcelona) on infectious disease outcomes. In Burkina Faso, Aditi leads a randomized controlled trial as part of the DFG funded programme on climate change and health testing the effectiveness of passive housing interventions, including cool roofs and their effects on health, environment and economic outcomes in a rural, sub-Saharan African setting. Aditi received her doctorate summa cum laude from Heidelberg University and a Master of Public Health and Bachelor of Science from Auckland University. She has worked in a policy leadership role at the Ministry of Health, New Zealand.

aditi.bunker(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Program Manager

Jackson, Susan T MA, PhD

Susan manages the CCHI Group’s projects. Before joining HIGH, she was principal investigator of Militarization 2.0: militarization’s social media footprint through a gendered lens, a multi-team five-year research grant funded by the Swedish Research Council. Her research interests include system and design thinking, methodology development and interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving. She holds a PhD in political science (international relations) from the University of Arizona.

susan.jackson(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Postdoctoral Researchers

Stiles, Pascale PhD, MSc

Pascale is a post-doctoral scientist in the IDAlert project at HIGH. She is interested in vector-borne and other infectious diseases, particularly how climate change influences their spatial distribution and interventions to prevent disease spread. Previously, she worked on highly pathogenic avian influenza introduction risk at the National Veterinary Institute of Sweden. Her PhD in Epidemiology with a Designated Emphasis in the Biology of Vector-borne Diseases from the University of California, Davis, focused on West Nile virus risk and surveillance in California. She also holds a MSc in Control of Infectious Diseases from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BS in Biology and Global Health from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

pascale.stiles(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Treskova, Marina PhD

Marina is a post-doctorate scientist. She has completed her PhD in Health Economics, where she focused on the model-based evaluation of public health interventions such as vaccination and cancer screening. She has also been trained in Biology and Epidemiology. Her current research interest and focus lie on the impacts of changing climate on infectious diseases such as vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. She is particularly interested in investigating climate change and land use effects on zoonotic pathogen spillover from reservoir host animals to humans and domestic animals. Further, her domain includes interventions that go beyond conventional public health and target disease emergence at the source. These include upstream prevention policies, mosquito-bite control, and nature-based solutions. In her research, she utilizes different models and methods of intervention science to explore effective and cost-effective ways to prevent the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases.

marina.treskova(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Researchers

Andersen, Peter BSc (econ.), DipSW, MSc Social Work

Pete is a researcher with the FEAST Horizon grant. He has a MSc in social work and is particularly interested in improving outcomes for vulnerable groups, health and environmental sustainability.

peter.andersen(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Walsh, Fiona MIA MPH

Fiona is a researcher with the IDAlert project. She holds an MIA and MPH from Columbia University. Her research interests cover health policy and systems research, including adoption and diffusion of innovations in health systems, such as new technologies, disease control programs, and health worker initiatives.

fiona.walsh(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Associated Team @UKHD

Bärnighausen, Till MD, ScD, MSc, MSc

Till Bärnighausen is a population health researcher who focuses on three areas of research: (i) establishing the causal impacts of large-scale global health interventions – such as HIV treatment, HIV prevention, and childhood vaccination – on health, economic and social outcomes; (ii) identifying and testing innovations to improve the delivery of global health interventions through public-sector health systems, and (iii) developing new methods for applied population-based health research. He is director of the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health and principal investigator on a number of grants from a large science funders, such as the US National Institutes of Health (including five R01 grants), the European Union, the European Commission, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), Elton John AIDS Foundation, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. He has also received research funding from Harvard, Rush Foundation, William F. Milton Fund, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, International Development Research Centre Canada, USAID, WHO, UNAIDS and World Bank. Till also is Adjunct Professor of Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the US and a Senior Faculty at the Wellcome Trust’s Africa Health Research Institute (ARHI) in South Africa.

till.baernighausen(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Compaoré, Guillaume MD MSc

Guillaume is the Field Coordinator for the Cool Roofs study in Nouna, Burkina Faso. Located at the Nouna Health Research Center, a part of the National Institute of Public Health in Burkina Faso, Guillaume’s research interests include clinical trials and malaria and public health.

gcompaore2(at)gmail.com

Jani, Anant PhD

Anant is a principal investigator in the Horizon Europe project Food systems that support transitions to hEalthy And Sustainable dieTs (FEAST) at HIGH and an Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He currently works on understanding how we can improve population health through social prescriptions and by addressing social determinants of health. Prior to his position at the University of Oxford, Anant worked in Europe and the Middle East to help healthcare systems within these countries to focus more on value-based healthcare. Anant has a PhD in immunology from Yale University.

anant.jani(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Rocklöv, Joacim PhD

Joacim is an epidemiologist, modeler and data scientist conducting interdisciplinary research within the field of climate change and infectious diseases. He obtained his PhD from Umeå University, Sweden. In the year 2021 he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship endowed by the The Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany. The chair at Heidelberg University focuses on applying data science and modelling to the area of One Health and climate change. It functions as a bridge between the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH) and the interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Computing (IWR) at Heidelberg University. In 2018 Joacim was awarded the Albert II of Monaco and the Institute Pasteur Prize for research on environmental change and infectious diseases. Prof. Rocklöv is the principal investigator and co-PI of several major research projects within the area of climate change and infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness. He is a Guest Professor at Umeå University in Sweden

joacim.rocklov(at)umu.se

Sewe, Maquines PhD

Maquines is a statistician with a PhD in Epidemiology. He is focusing on statistical modelling of climate and disease relationships with a special interest in Global Health.

maquines.sewe(at)umu.se