The Drexel Climate Change and Urban Health Research Center

This page presents historical information given that CCUH was terminated prematurely by NIH in May 2025. 

The Drexel Climate Change and Urban Health Research Center (CCUH) was an exploratory center launched in September 2023 and funded by a P20 grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), under the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative. The CCUH grant was terminated by NIH prematurely in May 2025.

Research on the important topic of climate change and urban health continues across the UHC, including through the SALURBAL-Climate project. We encourage you to sign up for the UHC and SALURBAL-Climate newsletters to stay informed about these efforts.

CCUH was established to conduct research, capacity building and policy translation on the impacts of climate change on health and health equity in urban areas across the Americas with the ultimate goal of  promoting evidence-informed urban policies.

CCUH partners included six institutions in the United States, Guatemala, and Brazil: the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative, the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP), the University of California, Berkeley, the University of São Paulo, the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)/Belo Horizonte, and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in Rio de Janeiro.

Learn more about our team

Why Study Climate Change and Health in Cities?

Across North and South America, over 80% of the population resides in urban areas. Cities, particularly in low- and middle- income countries, can be especially vulnerable to climate hazards due to their geographic, demographic, and built environment characteristics. In addition, high levels of inequality within cities put some urban communities at greater risk.

As urban populations continue to increase worldwide, unsustainable patterns of consumption and greenhouse gas emissions will exacerbate ongoing climate change. Globally, cities account for over 70% of CO2 emissions.

Cities present opportunities to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. To take advantage of these opportunities cities will need robust, context-specific, and actionable evidence that connects climate change to urban features that can be modified via urban policy and planning decisions. To this end, CCUH conducted comparative cross-city and cross-country analyses to explore and demonstrate the specific climate- and city-related factors that impact health. Comparisons across a variety of settings and with large datasets helped CCUH identify the most impactful interventions that can promote health, equity, and sustainability in urban communities across the Americas.

Learn More About Our Work

CCUH leveraged existing partnerships with cities and urban health teams across the Americas to lay the foundation for impactful work on how climate change affects urban health and what cities can do about it. The four CCUH Cores included:

An Administrative Core that ensured participatory governance as well as coordination and integration across all activities, projects, and cores; supports integrated data infrastructure; and evaluates and plans for sustainability.

A Research Project that conducted cross-city comparative analysis of differential neighborhood vulnerability to the health impacts of heat. The Research Project served as an exemplar of cross-city research that can be scaled up to other climate change-related exposures and outcomes, and to other urban areas across the Americas.

A Research Capacity Building Core strengthened capacity to conduct research on climate change and health in cities among urban health research teams in the U.S. and Latin America, with a focus on researchers from low- and middle-income countries and diverse backgrounds. Learn more about our research.

A Community Engagement Core engaged a broad set of urban community and policy actors to ensure the responsiveness of our research to local needs and strengthen community and policy actors’ capacity to use research findings for advocacy and action. Learn more about our community engagement.

CCUH Events

CCUH events included public webinars and an invited speaker series.

Watch our past webinars on YouTube.