The Environment & Human Health programme is a joint three-year inter-disciplinary capacity-building programme supported by NERC, EA, Defra, the MOD, MRC, 
The Wellcome Trust, ESRC, BBSRC, EPSRC and HPA.  
  
The programme aims to help improve the health of people, both in the UK and globally, by:  
  
developing a community of researchers who can undertake multi- and inter-disciplinary work to help us understanding the links between the environment 
and human health,   
  
improving our ability to identify and predict emerging issues of potential concern,   
  
improve the evidence available to support risk assessments and regulation-setting by government departments, agencies, and other stakeholders. 
         

The natural environment contributes to people's health through the quality of air we breath, the food we eat and the water we drink.  
  
It offers health enhancing economic and recreational opportunities on the one hand but is threatened by many activities such as transport, industrial processes, 
agricultural and waste management practices on the other.  
  
Environmental pollutants and potentially pathogenic organisms can harm people's health through a series of complex transport and exposure pathways. 
These are areas of growing public and government interest.   
  
The Environment and Human Health Programme has identified a number of areas of interest and these issues span many scientific disciplines. The Programme 
aims to build multi- and inter-disciplinary research capacity that can effectively tackle the 'real-world' multi-and inter-disciplinary problems that 
we face not only in the UK but also globally.  
  
The other principle aim of the Programme is to identify and prioritise research areas.  
  
The outcomes of the Environment and Human Health Programme will be to:  
  
create working relationships between academics of different disciplines that can be built on for future multi- and inter-disciplinary research;  
  
increase in scientific knowledge regarding environment and human health issues;  
  
inform development of more effective policy and practice to improve human health.  
  
Programme partners   
The programme's partners are:  
  
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)   
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)   
Environment Agency (EA)   
Ministry of Defence (MOD)   
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)   
Medical Research Council (MRC)   
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)   
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)   
Health Protection Agency (HPA) 
         

Restricted to reserach institutes and universities.  Now closed to applications, although a small limited call may take place