Projects

The “Healthy Mamas and Babies” Project implements a heat adaptation strategy for pregnant women in rural northern Ghana. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to increasing environmental heat exposure driven by human-induced climate change. Rising temperatures pose significant risks not only to pregnant women themselves, but also to their unborn babies and infants. To address this challenge, the project adopts a gender-transformative approach that goes beyond the immediate health risks of heat exposure and recognizes the underlying structural and normative barriers that perpetuate gender inequality.

At the Planetary Health Working Group in Halle, we are especially interested in understanding the physiological responses of pregnant women and their fetuses to heat exposure and in evaluating the heat adaptation strategy on this basis. To do so, we use wearable devices that continuously measure heart rate, core body temperature, and acceleration. In addition, we assess the individual heat exposure of each study participant throughout the study period. This integrated approach allows us to examine how environmental heat affects maternal and fetal physiology and to determine whether the adaptation strategy effectively reduces heat-related stress.

The study is hosted by the Navrongo Health and Demographic Surveillance Site in the Kassena-Nankana District in Ghana. It is a collaborative project between the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Navrongo Health Research Centre, University for Development Studies, Charité Center for Global Health, Yarrow Global Consulting gGmbH, and AG Global and Planetary Health Halle. 

The project is funded by the German Alliance for Global Health Research (GLOHRA).

On October 1, 2025, the three-year funding phase of our graduate school VISTA – “Health Services Research in the Context of a Changing Environment and an Aging Society” – began. VISTA is dedicated to the central question of how health and healthcare can be sustainably designed in a changing environment and in the face of an aging society. 

The research project is funded by the Investment Bank of Saxony-Anhalt as part of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). This provides targeted support for the scientific development of innovative healthcare approaches.

Thanks to this funding, eleven doctoral students are able to work on issues arising from the interplay of ecological, demographic, and social challenges. The projects combine scientific expertise from medicine, nursing and health sciences, public health, ethics, data science, and related disciplines to develop forward-looking approaches to prevention, care, and health resilience.