Greetings,

We are excited to share this funding opportunity from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF). Their Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants promote growth of new connections between scholars, practitioners, educators, and/or communicators working to understand, spread the word about, and mitigate the impacts of climate change on human health. This program will end with the July 2026 deadline. More information about the award can be found in the synopsis and links below. For a full list of currently open opportunities that have been announced through our office, please visit our new Current Opportunities web page. As a reminder, our Research Development team is available to provide proposal development support to FAS ladder faculty.

Burroughs Wellcome Fund: Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants

• OSP Deadline: Five business days in advance of submission, or by July 16, 2026 at 9:00 AM ET
  Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your departmental or FORA grants administrator.
• Sponsor Deadline: Rolling through July 23, 2026 at 3:00 PM ET; this is the last deadline for this program.
• Award Amount: $2,500-$50,000
  Indirect costs may not be charged against BWF grants. This falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy. Please discuss this with your departmental or FORA grants administrator before preparing an application.

Program Overview

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) aims to stimulate the growth of new connections between thinkers working in largely disconnected fields, who, together, may change the course of climate change’s impact on human health. This program—which ends with the July 2026 deadline—supports work conceived through many kinds of creative thinking. Successful applicants include academic scientists, physicians and public health experts, community organizations, science outreach centers, non-biomedical academic departments, and more. To be competitive, the proposed support should not be to fund the applicant’s current projects but should be utilized to catalyze new transdisciplinary effort. Additionally, the work should bring new collaborators together, pull fields together in new ways, or combine separate resources into more powerful wholes.

Priority Areas

• BWF is primarily, but not exclusively, interested in the following activities and topics:

  • Activities that build connections between basic and early biomedical scientific approaches and ecological, environmental, geological, geographic, and planetary-scale thinking, as well as with population-focused fields, including epidemiology and public health, demography, economics, and urban planning.

  • Work piloting new approaches or interactions aimed at reducing the impact of health-centered activities, such as developing more sustainable systems for healthcare, care delivery, and biomedical research.

  • Preparation for the impacts of extreme weather and other crises that can lead to large-scale disruptions, immediately affecting human health and the delivery of healthcare.
  • Public outreach, climate communication, and education efforts focused on the intersection of climate and health. 
• Work focused on issues like heat, particulates, fire, and flooding is not competitive if it does not pull in substantial thinking about climate. Simply stating that heat, for example, is increasingly viewed as a problem is not enough.

Eligibility Criteria

• An individual may only serve as a principal investigator/project director on one application during each review period.
  • Individuals may only serve twice as directors (principal investigators/project directors) for proposals supported over time by this program.
• Current and past awardees from other BWF programs are eligible to apply.
• Proposals from single institutions must develop partnerships that do not already occur naturally.
  • Proposals from more than one institution are responsive.
  • Only non-profit institutions may be supported by BWF’s award, but non-profits may involve for-profit organizations in their proposals.
  • Applicants must be significant partners in the work proposed and may not simply provide a non-profit pass-through.
• This program does not support biomedical research projects proposed by individual investigators, but only by collaborative teams. 

Application Materials

• Applicant information
• Institutional information, including proof of non-profit status
• List of partnering organizations/institutions
• Signing official information
• Budget and budget justification
• Cover sheet—available to download in ProposalCentral
• Narrative proposal—up to five pages, plus a short reference list
• Project budget
• Supporting documentation—short form CVs of key personnel

Selection Criteria

• Proposals will be reviewed by a standing committee within BWF with advice from expert reviewers drawn from a panel recommended by the National Academy of Medicine. Selection criteria include:
  • Logic of the proposed activity.
  • Potential impact on stimulating development of effective partnerships that may:
    • Influence understanding of the interplay between climate change and human health.
    • Model effective approaches to changing how people, systems, places, or organizations think about the impact of climate change on human health. 

Additional Information and Resources

 

 

 

 

 

 

Data Science, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence

Engineering and Technology

Environmental and Climate Science

Life Sciences

Social Sciences

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