Project · Funded project
BREATHE
Bridging Research on Environmental Attribution and Health Equity
- Funded by
- Wellcome Trust
- PI
Dann Mitchell
Eunice Lo
Rachel James- Team
Ruby Lieber
Dan Skinner
Emily Vosper
Joanne Godwin- Collaborators
- Mauricio BarretoKatja FrielerAntonio GasparriniMyer GlickmanAndy HainesVeronika HuberLudmilla JacobsonMark NewAntje WeisheimerRoberto AndradeJony ArraisHuiqi ChenSeongha ChoLei GuZoe Haskell-CraigVijendra IngoleNick LeachQueen MarekerahPierre MasselotDan McMylerDanilo NascimentoKenechi OmekeJean Souza dos ReisJan Volkholz
- Duration
- Mar 2025 – present
Summary
The BREATHE project is developing a framework for health impact attribution, applicable across geographical scales and socio-economic contexts. The project is attributing impacts for a range of weather events and climate patterns on different morbidity and mortality health outcomes. We will open up our output and methods via an open data platform (under development).
Key areas of work are i) global heat health attribution, ii) cause specific and equitable health attribution in Brazil, and iii) novel methods for climate attribution.
Outputs
- Enhancing preparedness for the impending super El Niño ↗ The Lancet 2026
- Approaches, challenges and applications of climate change impact attribution ↗ Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 2026
- Uncertain dynamic response of mid-latitude winter precipitation ↗ Nature 2026
- We need a global assessment of avoidable climate change risks ↗ Nature 2026
- Global excess deaths associated with heatwaves in 2023 and the contribution of human-induced climate change ↗ The Innovation 2025
- The attribution of human health outcomes to climate change - transdisciplinary practical guidance ↗ Climatic Change
Partners
- CIDACS (Centre for Data and Knowledge Integration for Health) Brazil ↗
- EBD-CSIC (Estación Biológica de Doñana-CSIC) Spain ↗
- LSHTM (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) UK ↗
- ONS (Office for National Statistics) UK
- Oxford (University of Oxford) UK
- PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) Germany
- UCT (University of Cape Town) South Africa
- UFF (Fluminense Federal University) Brazil
Research themesImpact Attribution
News, media & posts
- Five ways to prepare for the impending El Niño Media · 8 Oct 2026
Research led by Dr Ruby Lieber and Prof Dann Mitchell, published in The Lancet, identifies five key ways countries can prepare for the impending El Niño and reduce its toll on human health. - Why British summers are uniquely bad Media · 11 Aug 2026
Dann Mitchell worked with science communicator and YouTuber Simon Clark on a video explaining why British summers are uniquely bad.