Full title: Understanding and preventing climate-related health risks through mediating pathways
Partners: Lisbon Council (BE), Danish Cancer Society (DK), Aarhus University (DK), Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health (HR), University of Sevilla (ES), Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (FI), Azienda Sanitaria Locale ROMA 1 (IT), Karolinska Institutet (SE), Institute for Anthropological Research (HR), Municipality of Split (HR), Municipality of Seville (ES), Institute Ruđer Bošković (HR), Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (GR), Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service (HR), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (BR).
Start Date: 01/01/2027 Duration: 48 months
Horizon Europe
Project summary:
BetterLIFE supports local and regional authorities in developing Local Heating and Cooling Plans that are financially sound, co-created with stakeholders and include gas network decommissioning plans. Through five pilots (Dublin, Maribor, Athens, Almada, Gabrovo), open-source tools, training and a community of practice, it delivers replicable roadmaps for the clean energy transition across Europe.
Brief Description:
Europe is the fastest-warming continent, yet decision-makers lack pathway-specific evidence separating direct heat effects from mediated exposures such as air pollution, aeroallergens, noise, and indoor overheating.
U-PATH addresses this gap through a pathway-based methodology combining high-resolution climate–pollution exposure modelling (WRF/DEHM/UBM, 1979–2025), future climate scenarios for the 2040s and 2090s coupling this model system to EC-Earth for conducting climate-pollution integrated health impact assessments with the EVA model, updated with new exposure-response functions from four registry-linked European cohorts covering >16 million individuals, a Brazilian comparator (~1.2 M), indoor and outdoor exposure with wearable biomonitoring, and SSHdriven co-design in pilot cities (Split, Sevilla).
Focus will be on cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and mortality.
Seven strategic objectives structure the work: Building harmonised exposure intelligence, quantifying mediating and modifying pathways, modelling indoor exposure, stratifying vulnerability across European and LMIC populations, projecting future burden under SSP scenarios with NDC-aligned mitigation co-benefits, and delivering FAIR outputs with post-project legacy.
The approach moves beyond associations to separated causal insights, from retrospective analyses to early-warning thresholds and projections, and from academic outputs to decision support. The project stratifies vulnerability by building type, occupation, medication use, and SES.
A consortium of 14 beneficiaries and one associated partner across 9 countries delivers collaboration of climate science, epidemiology, environmental and occupational health, AI, social sciences, and governance.
Key deliverables include co-designed city toolkits, policy briefs, an exposure–response function library, and adaptive prevention scenarios quantifying avoidable disease burden.
All outputs are FAIR-by-design, EHDS- and EOSC-aligned, and structured for handover to the EC.
Website: https://betterlife-project.eu/