Environmental Justice and Public Health: Climate, Land, & (Health) Outcome of Dengue Fever (CLOUD)

Environmental Justice and Public Health: Climate, Land, & (Health) Outcome of Dengue Fever (CLOUD) is a NASA-funded interdisciplinary effort to examine the intersections among climate dynamics, land factors and health outcomes specifically related to dengue fever, framed within an environmental justice and public health perspective. CLOUD's scope emphasizes the integration of climate science, land-use considerations, and epidemiological outcomes to better understand how environmental and social determinants shape dengue risk and impact.

The CLOUD initiative explicitly centers environmental justice, suggesting the research will assess disparities in exposure, vulnerability and health outcomes across different communities and landscapes. By situating dengue fever within broader climate and land contexts, the project aims to illuminate how changing climatic conditions and land-use patterns may influence the distribution and severity of dengue, and how these influences may be unequally experienced by populations based on social, economic, and geographic factors.

The public health focus indicates attention to health outcomes, surveillance, and possibly interventions or policy-relevant insights that address both disease control and justice-oriented outcomes. CLOUD's NASA backing suggests use of Earth-observation, remote sensing, or other climate and land data products alongside public health and social data, forming a multi-scale analytical approach to understanding dengue risk drivers.

Through this interdisciplinary framing, the project is positioned to generate knowledge that can inform public health planning, community-level risk reduction and equitable policy responses.