In his work as a physician based in the United Kingdom, Bilal Mateen has never treated a single case of dengue, Zika, or chikungunya, which disproportionately affect people in low-income countries. But he expects that will change within a few decades as rising temperatures and changing weather patterns drive the spread of these climate-sensitive infectious diseases globally, often to regions that have not seen them in the past.

There will be a growing number of suitable environments for the Aedes mosquito — which transmits dengue, Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever, and other viruses — and it’s predicted that 1 billion people will be newly at risk of these diseases by the year 2080. As it stands, health systems worldwide are unprepared for this shift.

Last month, Wellcome, which supports health research and where Mateen is senior manager of digital technology in addition to his outside clinical work, announced a new funding call to catalyze climate-sensitive infectious disease research. According to Mateen, the U.K.-based foundation has set aside £10 million ($13.4 million) for the development of tools that will allow modeling for these diseases “to be done more accurately, efficiently, and with greater downstream impact,” by better integrating research into policy.

With this funding, Wellcome is working to ensure that early warning systems for climate-sensitive infectious diseases actually inform evidence-based public health decision making.