FRONTIERS is an initiative funded by the European Research Council aimed at bringing scientists and journalists closer together through residencies at European research centres
The programme seeks to address current challenges in science journalism, such as the deterioration of working conditions and the resources available to professionals.
BBC journalist Danielle Fleming has been one of the selected journalists and will be in residence at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, where she will research climate change and its impacts on global health.
The FRONTIERS Science Journalism Residency Programme of the European Research Council (ERC) has just announced the results of its second call for applications. Among the awarded people, ten this year, is Danielle Fleming, a journalist from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), who will be doing her journalistic residency at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS).
Danielle will spend three to five months in residence working in the Global Health Resilience (GHR) group, led by ICREA Professor Rachel Lowe, of the BSC's Earth Sciences Department. The goal of the GHR group is to co-produce tools to support policy-relevant decision-making to improve surveillance, preparedness and response to global health challenges, focusing on climate-sensitive infectious diseases.
The team applies a transdisciplinary approach, developing solutions that combine epidemiology, climate science, global health, biology, mathematical modelling and data science. Cutting-edge methodological research is being carried out to understand the links between environmental change, socio-economic inequalities and the emergence and spread of infectious diseases from global to local scales. This knowledge is then fed into the co-creation process to develop indicators, impact-based forecasting models and early warning systems on sub-seasonal to decadal time scales, which help to anticipate future risks in collaboration with public health, disaster risk management and the humanitarian field.
The journalist’s proposal deals with climate change and its impact on health. “In the media, climatic events are well publicised, however, less attention is given to their impact on our health. Insects are adapting to new environments and as a result, climate change is fuelling the spread of non-native infectious diseases to places they couldn’t have survived before,” stated Fleming. She added: “This initial research project will become the foundation for a series of TV and video packages to promote greater awareness of global health and how it is affected by climate change.”
On her side, Professor Rachel Lowe, who will be hosting and guiding Fleming during her stay at BSC, declared: “We are delighted to welcome Danielle to the GHR group to help ensure our research reaches a broad and diverse audience and to help raise awareness of the pressing global health challenges posed by climate change, environmental degradation and deepening inequalities, as well as the way digital technologies, co-designed in collaboration with researchers and decision-makers across the globe, can strengthen local resilience to global change.”
This residency represents a unique opportunity to explore frontier research on various fronts that shape society, covering current issues such as climate change, technology, life sciences, health and medical journalism.
With this science journalism programme, the ERC hopes to improve public confidence in science, tackle misinformation and improve social resilience in the face of disinformation. FRONTIERS envisions a world where scientists and journalists work together, each with expertise, to provide accurate scientific information to as many people as possible.
