Fellows’ insights: a quarter full of improvements

By Chloé Morin

Hello readers! My name is Chloé Morin, and I am a CSIDNet fellow working on the BRIGHT Pacific project. I am one of the five fellows who were onboarded in April 2025, selected from 245 applications from around the world. If you are curious about how things started, please read the previous fellowship blog post here. This blog post serves as a second-quarter update on our ongoing program.

Two gatherings in one quarter: a key time to meet other CSID research stakeholders

This quarter started with 4 CSID Network members participating in the Keystone Symposium on Climate Change & Infectious Disease Threats in Hannover, Germany, from June 23–27, 2025. Unfortunately, I was the only fellow to attend this meeting, but it was a good opportunity to meet Collaborative Committee member Junwen Guo and CSIDNet staff Ragıp Zık and Angela Okune. This event was preceded by a discussion day among CSIDNet members and sparked interesting conversations about CSIDNet’s organisation, promotion, and communication.

The Keystone Symposium gathered around 75 researchers from various countries and territories. A great part of the presentations and discussions during this event was focused on the modeling of infectious diseases and climate science. Cross-disciplinary exchanges were promoted during poster sessions, occurring during midday all week long, with particular interest from the public in community-level projects. During this Symposium, I had the great pleasure to present my BRIGHT Pacific project in a short talk, as part of my selection as a “Scholarship Awardee” for this Keystone Symposium.

Pictures taken during the Keystone Symposium on Climate Change & Infectious Disease Threats in Hannover, Germany. CSID members meeting (first image; Junwen Guo, Ragıp Zık, Chloé Morin) and short talk presentation given by Chloé Morin (second image).

This quarter as a CSIDNet fellow ended with the CSID Network Annual General Meeting (AGM), which was held in Thailand from July 21-25, 2025, and co-organized with the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University.

Unfortunately, not all fellows were able to join the in-person session. Hat, Henok, and I were participating in this in-person event. Amber, our co-fellow from South Africa, participated in the virtual AGM, and also animated a session on water-related, climate-sensitive infectious diseases. Unfortunately, we missed Sabrina, from Argentina, as she was on leave at this time.

Picture of the whole group of participants at the CSIDNet AGM in Thailand.

This AGM was a very good opportunity to meet with fellows and exchange ideas about our projects. We also had the opportunity to present our work during short presentations on the second day, and to engage with the Committees and Working Group. Hat especially was already engaged with the Collaborative Committee for several months. Henok and I connected with members, and we are now engaged as more than just fellows! Henok participated in the working group CSID Models, Data, and Methods Repository (CSID-MDM), while I joined both the Communications Committee and contributed to the development of the “Community Engagement for Climate-Sensitive Infectious Diseases (CE4CSID)” working group, a theme that resonates strongly with my interests and aligns with the broader objectives of the network.

If you are interested in more complete feedback on the overall AGM, please see the dedicated blog post here!

Overall progress made by the fellows

Chloé Morin (Tahiti, French Polynesia)

My project aims to bring together researchers and health stakeholders from Pacific Island countries and territories.  All with the objective of providing them with a secure digital platform where they can exchange, share, and easily collaborate on their CSID research projects. During the first quarter, I focused on developing the platform and reaching out to local scientists and health stakeholders.

In the second quarter, I had the opportunity to attend both the Keystone Symposium in Hannover and the in-person CSIDNet AGM in Thailand. These events were excellent opportunities to challenge my project and gain new insights from external researchers, scientists, and health professionals. In July, I also traveled to Fiji to meet my partners (i.e. members of Fiji National University and Fiji Centre for Disease Control teams), strengthen our collaborations, and present the platform I am building. The feedback I received during this week abroad was overwhelmingly positive, and the platform became highly active as partners started to share documents and work online. At this stage, the platform is accessible only to a select few, but I hope to expand access as soon as possible.

In the coming weeks, I plan on  developing resources that will be made available through the platform. Resources such as reference guidelines on ethics and templates for communication and science popularization, which I will share with my community of practice.

Angkana T. Huang (HAT) (Thailand)

Hat’s project aims to develop sustainable, community-driven, evidence-based responses to climate-sensitive infectious diseases, starting with mosquito-borne illnesses in southern Thailand. During the first quarter, she devised strategies to map existing community-driven initiatives by engaging stakeholders from competitions to identify local champions, funders, and facilitators.

This quarter, Hat’s work was shaped by insights gained from the Annual General Meeting (AGM), specifically, defining who are the communities and how to reach them. She is currently building a database of local innovators and the broader ecosystem in which they operate. With her hesitation on reinforcing currently overrepresented voices unlocked, she has decided to begin with the Ministry of Public Health’s Research and Innovations database, even though it is heavily skewed toward government-led initiatives rather than community-driven efforts. This marks a shift toward being less apologetic about starting with established resources, with the intention of expanding and diversifying from there. In the end, it is members of the community that decides who else should be included, not us.

Henok Tadesse Bireda (Ethiopia)

Henok’s project, CSID-NET Ethiopia, aims to establish a community of practice focused on CSIDs within Ethiopia’s national public health institute. During this second quarter, CSID-NET Ethiopia convened an institutional-level discussion with stakeholders including the center for public health emergency management, national data management center and climate and health working group ,across the national public health institute. Building on earlier achievements, the dialogue highlighted each group’s priorities and emphasized the need for open-source tools to strengthen collaboration.

Henok has also developed draft training materials on basic data wrangling and analytics using R for upcoming cohort training, aimed at equipping public health officers, researchers, and other actors with the skills needed to strengthen CSID preparedness and contextualized research. Exciting new ideas emerged, with priority given to projects that can have an immediate impact on frontline response.

Another major milestone was the launch of a collaborative project to develop a national mass-gathering atlas—a long-identified analytic need for public health preparedness. The interim results of the project are now openly available through the community’s GitHub account. Looking forward, CSID-NET Ethiopia is preparing additional tools to improve access to climate data, open portals for project submissions, and broaden participation from across the country. The momentum continues to build, and we are excited for the coming months.

Amber L. Abrams (South Africa)

Amber Abrams’ project “Climate Sensitive Water Related Infectious Diseases: Building community responses and resilience” led and contributed to a wide range of activities focused on water, climate, and health. She chaired a panel at the Virtual AGM on water-related, climate-sensitive infectious diseases and approaches to community research and engagement. She continued her work with the training committee and is developing a paper, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Bristol and Haramaya University, based on workshops held earlier this year. These workshops brought together decision-makers, community health workers, researchers, and city officials to identify priority concerns related to water, climate change, and health impacts.

Her community-focused activities included engagements with citizen groups to discuss local water challenges, workshops with school learners on water resources, responsibility, and experiences with stormwater and flooding, as well as the planning (later cancelled) of a workshop with a water activist group. She also hosted a two-day symposium that convened community members, city officials, and researchers to co-develop ideas for further engagement on key topics such as health risks associated with flooding.

Additionally, she received approval to research district-level health demands and impacts linked to flooding events. She reviewed more than 2,900 articles published since 2021 on flooding and its impact on human health and trained a cohort of climate science researchers in systematic health review methods.

Sabrina López (Argentina)

Sabrina’s project began as an effort to build a community of practice (CoP) around dengue in Argentina, with the possibility of later expanding to Latin America and the Caribbean. However, after surveying and engaging stakeholders from academia, public management, international organizations, citizen science initiatives, and free software cooperatives, she recognized the value of broadening the focus to include all climate-sensitive infectious diseases (CSIDs).

In the last months, she was on leave, but left open a form to collect expressions of interest for those who want to co-create the CoP. She has received over thirty responses and all the participants will meet soon to start shaping the CoP’s objectives.

What now?

We hope to meet you soon, either in-person or in a working group or a committee.

About the Author:

Chloé is a CSIDNet fellow based in French Polynesia. She has a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology and is currently a Postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Louis Malardé (Tahiti, French Polynesia). Passionate about communication and science popularization, her project focuses on building a community of practice for research on CSID in Pacific island countries and territories, including the sharing of regional guidelines and templates (such as lab work, ethics, communication, etc.).