Centre for Net Positive Health and Climate Solutions (The Net+ Centre)

Vision:
The Net+ Centre is able to pivot resources to address emerging needs or to respond to climate-related events (e.g. extreme weather). It becomes a self-sustaining, world-leading research centre beyond the funding lifetime, generating and evaluating net-positive solutions to the challenges climate change poses to our environment and health.
The Centre for Net Positive Health and Climate Solutions (Net+ Centre) is a national focus for research, networking and capacity building. It identifies 'net-positive' for health solutions, reducing the negative impacts of climate change while maximising the co-benefits of interventions, and provides the basis for furthering scientific advances, policy advice and innovation.
An integrated interdisciplinary team of academics, analysts, other professionals and publics with experience across research, policy and practice deliver a programme of research, education and co-creation that places the UK at the forefront of both knowledge generation and mobilisation to respond to emerging threats and opportunities.
Addressing the challenge: The Net+ Centre is framed around four interconnected themes:-
Conceptualise risks and opportunities. This involves horizon scanning of emerging threats and complex systems analysis to identify opportunities for policy action. Task forces are convened to discuss issues of critical importance.
Understand health and environmental impacts of mitigation and adaptation. This includes examining strategies for resilience in urban environments, green and blue infrastructure and food systems.
Evaluate solutions. This involves development of models and tools to aid decision making, including considering the business case for action.
Build capacity and engagement. This involves creating a community of practice, drawing on a range of knowledges to co-create solutions and building capacity at all levels to understand the challenges we face.
Core members:
The Net+ Centre brings together the resources and skills of the University of Exeter, the UK Health Security Agency, Forest Research, the National Trust, the Met Office and other partner organisations to create spaces for interdisciplinary and multisectoral working on health and climate change linkages across the UK. With expertise cutting across a range of disciplines from classics to economics, from climate modelling to epidemiology, anthropology to geography, data science to public health, the Net+ Centre is uniquely placed to deliver innovative, impactful research.

Community of practice:
Partnering with diverse organisations across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, the Net+ Centre is grounded in working with a wide range of communities across the UK to co-produce net-positive solutions. A programme of engagement cuts across its activities, which involves creating and maintaining dialogue with a range of different publics, including those of different ages (such as schools and older people) and in different locales (for example, coastal communities) ensuring that a range of knowledges and values are captured, guide its work and approach, and are leveraged as part of generating solutions.