Back ID Alert will strengthen Europe's resilience to emerging health threats

ID Alert will strengthen Europe's resilience to emerging health threats

This EU-funded project, in which UPF is among the 19 participating institutions, with John Palmer as principal investigator at the University, will address the emergence and transmission of zoonotic pathogens. ID Alert will develop novel indicators, innovative early warning systems and efficient tools for decision-makers, and by evaluating adaptation and mitigation strategies.

10.06.2022

Imatge inicial

As our planet heats up due to climate change, outbreaks of zoonotic diseases – diseases that spread between animals and humans – are increasing and expanding to new parts of the world, in particular Europe. Warmer temperatures, more variable rainfall, and the loss of biodiversity, influence the survival and spread of zoonotic pathogens, and the reproduction and geographic location of their vectors, such as mosquitoes or ticks.

Past and recent health crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have shown there is a need for stronger and more inclusive preparedness and responsiveness to epidemic-prone pathogens at the EU and global level. UPF is helping to tackle this challenge through its participation in IDAlert, a new € 9.18 million project funded by the European Commission. IDAlert will develop a range of decision-support tools and systems to enable decision-makers to act on time with improved responses.

John Palmer: "Our goal is to figure out how best these new tools can be used to respond to climate-driven disease outbreaks, with a particular focus on social inequality

“The project has chosen an innovative co-creation, participatory, and citizen science approach, involving stakeholders from the start to integrate needs and address gaps, and a One Health perspective, recognising the close connection between humans, animals, and the environment, and the increase in infectious diseases,” says Joacim Röcklov, IDAlert Project Coordinator, Umeå University (Sweden).

IDAlert will develop new climate and health indicators (i.e.  for viruses circulating among wild birds and mosquitoes such as the West Nile Virus) and monitoring mechanisms, incorporate an inequality lens, and inform policy development across sectors, setting a new standard in support of policy and decision-making.

Key role of UPF, which will develop new surveillance tools

UPF is responsible for developing and deploying novel surveillance tools that combine citizen science and molecular biology with socio-demographic surveys and human mobility data. "Our goal is to figure out how best these new tools can be used to respond to climate-driven disease outbreaks, with a particular focus on social inequality”, says John Palmer, the project’s principal investigator at UPF, where he is a member of Socio-demography Research Group (DemoSoc) of the Department of Political and Social Sciences

 One of the new tools the project will employ is Mosquito Alert, an expert-validated citizen science system that Palmer co-directs with Frederic Bartumeus at the Spanish National Research Council’s Blanes Center for Advanced Studies (CEAB-CSIC).

Improving climate and health policies at European level

IDAlert will assess the costs, effectiveness, benefits and policy viability of adaptation measures and strategies to improve the climate resilience of health systems in Europe. It will also explore the socio-economic aspects of health, investigating the emergence, transmission, and spread of zoonotic pathogens and consequences of climate and health policies on different socio-demographic, high-risk, and hard-to-reach groups, and how policy can help reduce these impacts.

The validity of the tools and methods developed in the project will be demonstrated in key hotspot sites in Spain, The Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, and Bangladesh, which are experiencing rapid urban transformation and climate-induced disease threats.

 IDAlert will ultimately contribute to more robust climate policies, guide authorities in public health, veterinary and environmental services

The project will maximise its reach and build on its ties with the European Climate and Health Observatory, the European Climate Adaptation Platform Climate-ADAPT, and the Lancet Countdown in Europe to guarantee long-term sustainability, policy impact and uptake.

Through its activities and objectives, IDAlert will ultimately contribute to more robust climate policies, guide authorities in public health, veterinary and environmental services, and safeguard the populations in Europe from the transmission and emergence of infectious pathogens due to climate change.

IDAlert, an interdisciplinary project within the framework of Horizon Europe

IDAlert – Infectious Disease decision-support tools and Alert systems to build climate Resilience to emerging health Threats officially started on 1 June 2022 is a € 9.18 million project and lasts for five years. The project is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme with Grant Agreement number 101057554.

The consortium involves 19 organisations from Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Greece, The Netherlands, Italy, UK, and Bangladesh, with world leading experts in a wide range of disciplines including zoonoses, infectious disease epidemiology, social sciences, artificial intelligence, environmental economics, and environmental and climate sciences. UPF is co-leading Work Package 4: Integrating novel data streams into early warning systems, while also collaborating in the project’s other work packages.

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03. Good health and well-being
13. Climate action
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