Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium (VIMC 2.0) research programme on climate change and vaccine-preventable diseases

The Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium (VIMC) was founded in 2016 to deliver a more sustainable, efficient, and transparent approach to generating disease burden and vaccine impact estimates. This grant will enable VIMC to better assess the implications of climate change for vaccination strategy, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Two interlinked research strands will: (a) assess the long-term impacts of climate change on disease range, burden and strategic implications for vaccine strategy and stockpiling; (b) examine how climate drives seasonal variation in disease transmission and burden, the impacts of increasingly frequent extreme climate events for disease burden, and model optimal prophylactic or reactive vaccination campaigns for mitigation. Programmatic research priorities will be informed by consultation with the VIMC stakeholder network. We will prioritise five climate-sensitive infections - malaria, dengue, yellow fever, cholera, and meningitis. The research will be collaborative with academic partners in LMICs most affected by these infections. It will also be cross-fertilizing between disease areas, developing generic inferential and projection platforms, software, and data resources. In addition, the grant will support capacity- strengthening via the recruitment of two foundational VIMC modelling groups from sub-Saharan Africa with expertise in health economic, operational, climate and/or geospatial modelling.