Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) has become a growing public health challenge in Europe and other parts of the world. The number of human cases of TBE in all endemic regions of Europe has increased by almost 400% in the last 30 years; with spreading risk areas and new foci across Europe and worldwide, TBE has been included as one of the biggest health threats arising from environmental change. Novel assessment and monitoring strategies are therefore needed to face current and future outbreaks. For our first MOOD science webinar of 2022, we invited Timothee Dub, Research Manager in the department of Health security of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) to discuss the results of his paper published in Emerging Infectious Disease ‘Game Animal Density, Climate, and Tick-Borne Encephalitis in Finland, 2007–2017’.