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Ammon News - The Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) and the California San Diego University received $3 million in research funding from the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the GeoHealth Hub project.

The GeoHealth Hub Climate Change and Health in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) project is a collaborative initiative between three US universities and three universities from the MENA Region to generate evidence for policies to minimize adverse health impacts of climate change in the region through state-of-the-art approaches. It focuses on climate-sensitive environmental risks such as nitrate pollution, heat waves, desert dust, and air pollution. The hub's overall activities aim to strengthen different stakeholders' capacity to develop and use evidence-based and cost-effective interventions, according to the NIH's Fogarty International Center website.

President of JUST Khalid el-Salem told Petra that the university is a leading researcher in the MENA region, noting that the research, which received the funding, was subjected to a national and international evaluation.

The hub's director Fayez Abdullah said the collaborators include three US universities: California San Diego, Harvard University, and the University of California, Berkeley, as well as three MENA universities: JUST, Lebanon's University of Balamand, and Morocco's Mohammed VI University of Health Sciences.

Abdullah, who is a professor at JUST, pointed out the project is expected to provide Masters' program scholarships for 25 students at the university and training grants at the US universities. In addition, the hub seeks to build institutional capacities by adding environmental health programs at the MENA universities in cooperation with the US universities and conducting research on the effects of climate change and health.

He explained that an annual conference on climate change effects on health will be held, in addition to training programs, workshops, visits to the US, and webinars to boost researchers' capabilities in the region.