Americas Hub
Americas Hub
Collaboration Strategy
Many countries in the Americas region face environmental changes affecting ecosystems, human mobility and public health. The Amazon highlights risks to biodiversity, carbon regulation and dependent communities. Ocean warming impacts coastal regions and marine life, while stronger El Niño events bring droughts and floods. Recurrent wildfires in California, show the growing health burden of climate hazards. These trends intersect with major migration corridors from Central to North America that further shape social and political dynamics, including what is currently at play in the United States.
The CliMigHealth Americas Hub is hosted by Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz Rio De Janeiro) and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Its work will focus on environmental monitoring on infectious diseases and heat island effects in major cities on the continent, one health education and sustainable health systems.
Right after the UN Climate Summit (COP30) in Belém in November 2025, the hub was officially launched during a two-day seminar at Oswaldo Cruz Rio, in the presence of CliMigHealth’s leadership team. During this exchange, regional priorities and interuniversity research preferences were established, including a working agenda for interregional cooperation within the broader network and a PhD research project on climate-related mental health effects in urban migrant communities in Brasil. Together with the Africa hub, they will engage with the Climade, which Oswaldo Cruz co-founded with Stellenbosch University.
Projects and activities
- Develop a regional strategy in accordance with the outcomes of the latest UN Climate Summit COP30 (hosted in Belém, Brasil).
- Joint Fiocruz – UGent project on social determinants of health (SDH) in the context of climate mobility in Brasil with CIDACS.
- Co-develop educational material and research on environmental sustainability in health systems in Latin-America.
- Joint collaboration with the Africa Hub within the Climade Network.
- Develop research projects on blue ocean health in the context of human and animal health.
Aims
- Establish the Americas Hub.
- Align the main outputs with the CliMigHealth Network strategy for 2025-2029 and beyond.
- Convene regional members working on the nexus to produce regionally focused research, public engagement activities, and educational outputs.
Collaborators
Dr. Clarice Rodrigues – co-lead hub clarice.rodrigues@fiocruz.br
Researcher at Center for Strategic Studies, Oswaldo Cruz Institute. Nurse and civel servant at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
Professor Wim Degrave – co-lead hub wim.degrave@fiocruz.br
Senior Researcher at Laboratory for Applied Genomics and Bioinnovations. Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Rio de Janeiro.
Collaborators: The Centre for Data and Knowledge Integration for Health (CIDACS), Professor Marcia Chame – Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz) and Polina Koriukina – Ugent
