Maria Nilsson

Maria Nilsson, Associate Professor, is a researcher at the Department of Epidemiology and Global Health, Umeå Centre for Global Health Research, Umeå University; a social scientist with a PhD in epidemiology and public health sciences. Her main interest is policy and adaptation research regarding climate change and global health. Prof. Nilsson was integrating editor for health in the 2015 ‘Lancet Commission – Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health’ and co-leads the working group on adaptation, planning, and resilience for health in the annual follow up till 2030; ‘The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change’. In 2017 she was awarded a fellowship from the Swedish Institute for Global Health Transformation (SIGHT), under the auspices of the Swedish Royal academy of Sciences, for global health leadership. Prof. Nilsson was a member of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) working group on climate change and health. She lead projects in low to high income countries; in ‘Dengue risk communication in a local community – understanding knowledge, attitudes and practice to improve action’ an Early Warning System for Dengue fever is created with a solid base in the local community in Indonesia (PI). In ‘Household Preferences for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in four European high-income countries - HOPE' (WP-leader) households' willingness to substantially reduce their climate footprint from private consumption and how existing policies affected the possibility was studied. Prof. Nilsson was the guest editor for two climate change and health focused supplements in Global Health Action, i) ‘Climate Change and Health in Vietnam” and ii) ‘Climate change impacts on working people’. In connection to her projects she is engaged in increasing the understanding of climate change and health impacts, working actively to feed research evidence into policy in practice.