The GW Climate and Health Institute released its inaugural annual report for 2022, spotlighting the institute’s performance in its first year of operation.

The report includes a recap of the institute’s research, training, courses, webinars and examples of action taken to address problems associated with climate change, as well as encouraging a global response to the threat from governments. The CHI is composed of faculty from 10 of the University’s school and leads courses in Milken Institute School of Public Health and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, according to the report.

“The Annual Report highlights the many accomplishments of the CHI and its affiliated faculty, staff and students during the 2021-22 academic year,” officials said in a tweet.

The report shows research by CHI members aimed at educating people about disciplines of climate change and human health research, like air pollution, social movements around climate change, infectious disease, sustainability, extreme weather, food systems and nutrition, mental health and environmental justice.

The CHI launched as a research institute composed of professors conducting policy-based research and named Susan Anenberg as the director at the beginning of the 2021 fall semester.

Officials will offer a climate and health concentration for Milken graduate students housed under the CHI this fall semester and will prepare graduate students for careers in the climate field and teach students to assess climate change-related health risks, like asthma.

CHI hosted eight webinars engaging nearly 600 participants about different topics in the climate and health space during the 2021-22 academic year according to the report.

The report highlights comments from CHI members to federal agencies, public testimony to the D.C. Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment and D.C. Public School’s Committee on Education in the Performance Oversight Hearing.

Anenberg and Lynn Goldman, dean of the public health school, co-signed on an amicus brief – a legal document supplied to a court of law containing information relating to a case from a person or organization not directly involved in the case – supporting the Environmental Protection Agency’s capability to regulate greenhouse gasses to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court later ruled against the EPA in that case, limiting the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gasses without congressional approval.

“Training the next generation in addressing the health consequences of climate change, as well as providing continuing education for professionals in the field, is at the forefront of the GW Climate and Health Institute’s mission,” officials said in the report.