Integrating climate-related exposures into the human exposome and characterising its changes in response to climate change

Topics under this destination are directed towards the Key Strategic Orientation 1 “The Green transition” and Key Strategic Orientation 3 “A more resilient, competitive, inclusive, and democratic Europe” of Horizon Europe’s strategic plan 2025-2027^[1].

Research and innovation supported under this destination should contribute to the following expected impact, set out in the strategic plan impact summary for the Health Cluster: “people's living and working environments are health-promoting and sustainable thanks to a better understanding of the environmental, occupational, social, sex and gender-related, and economic determinants of health”.

The environment we live and work in is a major determinant of our health and wellbeing and climate change acts as a risk multiplier, exacerbating the health effects of environmental stressors, increasing the incidence of non-communicable diseases, mental health conditions, and infectious diseases, particularly for populations in a vulnerable situation. The climatic crisis is a health crisis with impacts at the global level. Across Europe, the fastest-warming continent, heat and floods have caused devastating human and economic impact in recent years. In 2025, the Commission published a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda on Health and Climate Change^[2], providing a forward-looking overview of the current and emerging research needs and gaps in the field. This agenda informs the focus and objectives of this destination, aligning with the Commission's Political Guidelines for 2024-2029^[3], which emphasise the need to step up work on preventive health, climate resilience, adaptation, preparedness, and the green transition, while promoting circularity.

In this Work Programme part, Destination "Living and working in a health-promoting environment" focuses on understanding and addressing the impacts of climate change on human health, increasing climate adaptation and resilience and reducing the health sector's contribution to climate change. The results will support the EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate change, the European Climate Adaptation Plan (thematic window on health) and the European Climate Risk Assessment by enhancing understanding of health risks and informing prevention, adaptation, and mitigation actions for populations and healthcare systems. Moreover, this destination aims to identify and amplify the co-benefits of climate action for health outcomes. This integrated approach recognises that climate mitigation measures can simultaneously deliver significant health benefits, creating positive feedback loops between climate protection and public health. Strong collaborations across sectors and with other Horizon Europe Clusters dealing with issues such as agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, food, environment, climate, biodiversity, mobility, security, urban planning, social inclusion and gender will be needed to ensure that maximal societal benefits are reached. In view of increasing the impact of EU investments under Horizon Europe, the Commission welcomes and supports cooperation between EU-funded projects to enable cross-fertilisation and create synergies. This could range from networking to joint activities such as the participation in joint workshops, the exchange of knowledge, development and adoption of best practices, or joint communication activities. Unless specified otherwise, all topics are open to international collaboration to address global climate and health challenges.

Expected impacts:

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to living and working in a health-promoting environment, and more specifically to one or several of the following impacts:

• Policymakers and regulators are aware and well informed about climatic, environmental, socio-economic and occupational risk factors as well as health-promoting factors across society.
• Climatic, environmental, occupational, social, economic, and health policies and practices at the EU, national and regional level are sustainable and based on solid scientific evidence.
• The upstream determinants of health are known, understood and reduced.
• The health threats and burden and patient safety burdens resulting from exposure to climate drivers are lessened, so that the related number of deaths and illnesses is substantially reduced.
• Living and working environments in European cities and regions are healthier, more inclusive, safer, resilient and sustainable.
• The healthcare sector reduces its environmental footprint and transitions towards carbon neutrality.
• The adaptive capacity and resilience of populations and health systems in the EU to climate and environmental change-related to mental and physical health risks are strengthened.
• Citizens’ health and wellbeing are protected and promoted, and premature deaths, diseases and inequalities related to climate related risks are prevented.
• Citizens understand better complex climate, environment and health issues, and effective measures to address them and support related policies and regulations.

Legal entities established in China are not eligible to participate in both Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) and Innovation Actions (IAs) falling under this destination. For additional information please see “Restrictions on the participation of legal entities established in China” found in the Annex B of the General Annexes of this Work Programme.

[1] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/strategic-plan_en

[2] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/616cce9c-39e5-11f0-8a44-01aa75ed71a1

[3] https://commission.europa.eu/about/commission-2024-2029_en

Expected Outcome:

This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination “Living and working in a health-promoting environment”. To that end, proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that are directed at, tailored towards and contributing to most of the following expected outcomes:

• Researchers, policymakers, healthcare practitioners and the public have a more comprehensive understanding of the human exposome and the interactions between climatic, environmental and socio-behavioural factors, supported by FAIR^[1] data linking these exposures to disease and health outcomes.
• Researchers, governments, policymakers, social care services and healthcare practitioners have improved knowledge on the links between the climatic, social, lifestyle and environmental factors of the exposome and global health burden, supporting their efforts to adopt the exposome approach to identify and address relevant health impacts.
• The public has access to the latest information on the influence of global environmental exposures on health, enabling the adoption of health-promoting, climate-resilient and nature-positive behaviours.

Scope:

The exposome is the totality of exposures (and their interactions) experienced by an individual throughout their lifetime, including chemical, physical, biological, nutritional and psychosocial factors, from conception onwards. Many of these factors originate in the environment, including climate-related exposures such as extreme heat, heightened air pollution or drought. Climate change may amplify or interact synergistically with other better-established exposures, dynamically altering the human exposome and its health implications. Despite this, climate factors remain underrepresented in large-scale human exposome studies.

Research activities under this topic should strengthen the use of the exposome approach to study global exposures and generate evidence on their health implications. Proposals should focus on integrating climate-related factors into exposome research and understanding how the exposome changes in response to direct and indirect climate exposures. Moreover, research activities should be multiscale and multidisciplinary and account for the complexity and multifactorial nature of health determinants and the most pressing unmet medical needs in relation to environmental degradation and disrupted ecosystems. Proposals should include climate-relevant social determinants of health as part of their proposed activities.

More specifically, research actions under this topic should include all the following activities:

• Incorporate multiple climate exposures into exposomics studies and provide insights on their influence on disease burden, through interactions with other exposome factors.
• Predict, identify and monitor changes in the exposome (including environmental, social and occupational exposures) resulting from climate-related pressures and study their health implications to identify emerging health risks and potential benefits of climate change.
• Advance data generation, analysis, integration and interpretation in human exposomics, developing methodologies and integrating novel approaches (e.g. AI technologies and machine learning) for advanced data analytics, including for Real-World Data (RWD)^[2].

In addition, research actions should include several of the following targeted activities:

• Establish and investigate the biological pathways and mechanisms by which the exposome drives health impacts, jointly considering climate-related and other exposures. Build upon (when relevant) and study existing and/or newly generated longitudinal cohorts that combine individual exposome data with the corresponding medical, omics and biological data.
• Identify exposome-relevant indicators and biomarkers for exposome-related health risks and potential benefits using comprehensive exposome studies that combine climate, environmental, behavioural and social exposures. Account for disparities in individual trajectories and exposure patterns where relevant.
• Report on health-relevant exposome findings using, where possible, standardised metrics to ensure harmonised reporting of exposome-driven disease burden across regions and sectors. Build on existing exposome toolboxes and increase their robustness and coverage by integrating climate related exposures.
• Study the role of socioeconomic (e.g. income, energy poverty, occupation), demographic (e.g. gender, racial or ethnic origin^[3], age) and behavioural (e.g. public trust, risk perception) factors in determining patterns of exposure, using the exposome approach to generate knowledge on intersectional vulnerability and resilience to exposome-driven (including climate-driven) health impacts. Identify disproportionately affected populations and develop interventions to reduce disparities.

When handling vulnerability data and indicators, sex-, gender-, racial or ethnic origin^[3]-disaggregated data should be collected and analysed, incorporating intersectional factors where feasible and relevant.

International cooperation is encouraged, in particular with regions that are under-represented in human exposome research.

Projects should leverage the knowledge, data and tools already generated under past initiatives such as EHEN^[5] and ongoing initiatives such as IHEN^[6], ICOS ERIC^[7] and EIRENE RI^[8].

Proposals are encouraged to consider, where relevant, the data, expertise and services offered by European research infrastructures^[9] in the environment, climate and health domain. Projects should make the tools developed as part of their research available on the IHEN Exposome Toolbox^[10] and upload their data sets in the IHEN Data Catalogue^[11].

In order to maximise synergies and increase the impact of the projects, all proposals selected for funding from this topic will form a cluster and be required to participate in common networking and joint activities. Guidance on the potential activities to be developed can be obtained by consulting the ongoing clusters of projects under the Environment, Climate and Health research portfolio^[12].

Proposals should make sure that relevant activities, outcomes and outputs are shared with the European Climate and Health Observatory^[13] through the cluster that will be formed after the approval of the proposals.

This topic requires the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.

Applicants envisaging to include clinical studies^[14] should provide details of their clinical studies in the dedicated annex using the template provided in the submission system.

[1] See definition of FAIR data in the introduction to this Work Programme part.

[2] EMA definition: “Real-World Data are routinely collected data relating to patient health status or the delivery of healthcare from a variety of sources other than traditional clinical trials (e.g. claims databases, hospital data, electronic health records, registries, mhealth data, etc.)”.

[3] The use of the term ‘racial or ethnic origin’ does not imply an acceptance of theories that attempt to determine the existence of separate human races.

[4] The use of the term ‘racial or ethnic origin’ does not imply an acceptance of theories that attempt to determine the existence of separate human races.

[5] https://www.humanexposome.eu

[6] https://humanexposome.net

[7] https://www.icos-cp.eu/about/organisation-governance/icos-eric

[8] https://eirene.eu

[9] The catalogue of European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) research infrastructures portfolio can be browsed on the ESFRI website: https://ri-portfolio.esfri.eu

[10] https://bio.tools/t?domain=exposome

[11] https://data-catalogue.molgeniscloud.org/catalogue/catalogue

[12] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/research-area/health/environment-climate-and-health_en

[13] https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/observatory

[14] Please note that the definition of clinical studies (see introduction to this Work Programme part) is broad and it is recommended that you review it thoroughly before submitting your application.