Melissa Hart among Wellcome Trust grant recipients

Please join us in congratulating 21st Century Weather’s Associate Director Melissa Hart and her collaborators, who have received AU$4.2 million in Wellcome Trust grant funding to research the heat health burden on First Nations communities in under-resourced remote Australia.

Led by Associate Professor Supriya Mathew of the Menzies School of Health Research, the funded project will address the lack of evidence on how heat affects First Nations people living in remote Australia. 

Hot weather-related health impacts remain largely unknown for remote Australia, as local Primary Health Care (PHC) clinics are the first point of medical contact for most remote populations, rather than hospitals and other emergency services. 

This means the actual heat related health impacts on remote Australians will be evident through the analysis of PHC records and a synthesis of lived and work experiences of remote First Nations residents and remote PHC staff. 

This project will be the first of its kind to collect and collate evidence on the impacts of extreme hot temperatures on remote First Nations residents of Australia living across different climate zones. It will generate new evidence to inform appropriate, timely and context-related policy responses that may be transferable across similar settings.

Dr Mathew and Prof Hart are joined on the project by their fellow Chief Investigators Prof Deborah Russell (Menzies School of Health Research), Prof Kerstin Zander (Charles Darwin University), Dr Jamie Ranse (Griffith University) and Prof Linda Ford (Charles Darwin University).

The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation established in 1936, with a focus on climate change, infectious disease and mental health.

To read more about the project, funded as part of the 2024 Climate Impacts Awards, go to: https://wellcome.org/grant-funding/people-and-projects/grants-awarded/heat-health-burden-first-nations-communities-under

Professor Hart’s research looks at the impact of cities on climate and climate on cities, as well as the meteorological controls on air pollution. She is particularly interested in the heat burden in regions where people live, work and play, but are not captured by regulatory sensors. This includes schools, different urban areas, and remote communities. To read more about her career and interests, go to: https://21centuryweather.org.au/profile/melissa-hart/