Active Climate, Earth & Environment Public Health & Healthcare

Policy and Implementation for Climate & Health Equity (PAICE)

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

The UK’s push to cut carbon emissions is currently being designed without systematically accounting for how those policies will affect people’s health or widen existing inequalities. PAICE aims to fix that. The problem is straightforward: climate policies—such as insulating homes, shifting to electric vehicles, or changing diets—can have major health side effects, both good and bad. A poorly designed housing retrofit might reduce energy bills but worsen indoor air quality. A congestion charge could cut pollution but hit low-income commuters hardest. Current policy models rarely connect these dots across energy, housing, food, and transport sectors. PAICE will build a cross-sectoral computer model that predicts the combined effects of Net Zero policies on greenhouse gas emissions, population health, and health equity. The team will work directly with the UK Climate Change Committee—the statutory body that advises the government on carbon budgets—to feed these findings into the official monitoring framework. If successful, the project could reshape how the UK evaluates its climate policies, embedding health and equity as core metrics alongside emissions reductions. The results will also be shared with G7 partners, potentially influencing international policy design. This is applied, policy-facing research with a clear route to national decision-making.

View original technical description
PAICE will inform and evaluate UK Net Zero policies using transdisciplinary approaches to generate and implement evidence. Climate change mitigation policy must consider population health and health equity alongside reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and would benefit from an integrated, intersectoral approach. We will develop shared priorities with stakeholders, understand current and planned policies, build models to assess their cross- sectoral impact, consolidate a monitoring framework, and evaluate and help accelerate delivery. PAICE brings together experts from four Wellcome-funded projects (CUSSH, SHEFS, Pathfinder Initiative and HEROIC) that have generated evidence on the connections between climate and health in the energy, housing, food and transport sectors. We will: (1) co-develop a programme theory and linked monitoring and evaluation plan, (2) work with the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) using system dynamics to analyse policy opportunities, (3) build a model of the effects of these policies on population health, health equity and greenhouse gas emissions, (4) apply the findings to the CCC monitoring framework, and (5) use the programme theory to evaluate achievement of processes and objectives. PAICE responds to the opportunity to directly influence national policy development and implementation through the pivotal CCC and by sharing findings with G7 partners.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Andrew Haines (EPMC Awardee)Clare Heaviside (EPMC Awardee)Rosemary Green (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Pathfinder 2: accelerating climate action for health
Developing a research agenda for health benefits of local climate action
The air quality health and economic costs and benefits of a zero carbon UK
The health and equity impacts of climate change mitigation measures on indoor and outdoor air pollution exposure (HEICCAM)
A Health-centred Systems Approach towards Net-Zero: Transforming regional climate mitigation policies (Heal-NZ)

Original classification

Directed Call

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