Dr Aditi Bunker is an environmental epidemiologist and leads the Climate Change and Health Intervention Research Group at Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (Heidelberg University, Germany). Using experimental and quasi-experimental designs, Aditi’s team conducts large-scale causal impact evaluations on interventions in the housing, urban design, infrastructure and food sectors to assess how climate change adaptation and mitigation interventions affect population health, environmental and economic outcomes. Knowledge generated through this research informs governments, citizens, the private sector and donors on the uptake of adaptation and mitigation interventions with co-benefits for health, environment and the economy. Aditi enjoys developing public-private partnerships and working with government to scale and enable technology transfer of proven interventions to climate-vulnerable communities. Aditi also specializes in assessing the effects of weather parameters on health, including NCDs and mental health using time-series methods in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) most affected by climate change.
Aditi is the recipient of multiple grants. In Burkina Faso, Aditi leads a randomized controlled trial as part of the German Research Foundation (DFG)-funded project on climate change and health testing the effectiveness of passive housing interventions, including cool roofs and their effects on health, environment and economic outcomes in a rural, sub-Saharan African setting.
She is co-PI of REFLECT, a Wellcome Trust-funded multi-center trial investigating effects of cool roofs on health and environmental outcomes in Sonora, Mexico; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Ahmedabad, India; and Niue, Oceania. Aditi is a principal investigator in the Horizon Europe-funded project Food systems that support transitions to hEalthy And Sustainable dieTs (FEAST). Aditi is co-I and leads a work package for the Horizon Europe-funded project Infectious disease decision-support tools and alert systems to build climate resilience to emerging health threats (IDAlert). Aditi co-leads the AFRIVERSE project, which aims to build African climate-health attribution data, digital tools and capacity. In addition Aditi has received grants from the Tindall Foundation, Habitat for Humanity and Rockefeller Foundation.
