Summary:
- Deakin University Associate Professor Luana Main has been awarded a NHMRC TCR Climate-related health impacts and effective interventions to improve health outcomes 2024 grant funding worth $995,394.
- Associate Professor Main's project will explore how to reduce heat stress and improve the health and safety of workers in a changing climate.
- NHMRC TCR grants are designed to stimulate research or build research capacity in a specific area of health and medical science to the benefit of Australians.
Associate Professor Luana Main from Deakin University's Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN) and the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences will lead a new project exploring the human impacts of climate change and human adaptation to heat stress.
The project, 'REFRESH: Resilience enhancement for workers' fatigue, recovery and safety in the heat', has been awarded $995,394 in National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funding.
Together with industry partners, this project will identify viable solutions to reduce heat stress with a goal of improving the health and safety of people who work multiple days in the heat across numerous sectors.
In our rapidly changing climate, job-related heat stress fuelled by rising temperatures will continue to present a critical threat to the health and safety of the Australian workforce. Currently, Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines don't consider how many days have been worked in the heat, or the age or sex of workers.
The NHMRC grant aims to fund research into better understanding the current and future impacts of climate change on the health and wellbeing of Australians and on health system demand.
'It's an amazing opportunity to shape the future of how Australians work in hot environments and during heatwave conditions', Associate Professor Main says.
'We really want to partner deeply with industry to understand their needs and challenges and to co-design feasible, low-cost solutions that will help reduce heat stress across sectors. I am hoping that there will be organisations out there, concerned about the health and workforce implications climate change is having that will reach out and want to be involved in this research with us.'
The international research team includes Professor Brad Aisbett, Associate Professor Jarrad Lum and Dr Amelia Carr from Deakin, alongside Professor Glen Kenny, University of Ottawa, Professor Siobhan Banks, University of South Australia and Dr Ben Lee, University of Coventry.
This grant is awarded under the NHMRC Targeted Call for Research (TCR): Climate-related health impacts and effective interventions to improve health outcomes. The TCR comes following the release of Australia's National Health and Climate Strategy which outlines priorities for the next five years to address the health and wellbeing impacts of climate change on Australians.
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