BY MICHELLE SO
Fueled by a desire to help others and fascinated by the potential of medications to enhance human health, Cristina Arnés Sanz studied to become a pharmacist. Majoring in pharmacy at the Complutense University of Madrid, in her home country of Spain, Arnés Sanz became increasingly concerned and passionate about the environment and tackling climate change. During that time, she served as a member of the Climate Emergency Working Group of the European Students’ Forum (AEGEE). She was responsible for raising awareness about sustainability and climate action among thousands of students across Europe.
“As I fostered my engagement in the climate space, I asked myself if there was a relationship between our planet and our health,” Arnés Sanz said. “Through reading, online courses, and conferences I rapidly discovered that the answer was a firm ‘yes’.”
This growing interest in climate health brought Arnés Sanz to Heidelberg University in Germany where she worked for Professor Joacim Rocklov to study Climate Sensitive Infectious Diseases.
“I engaged in several exciting projects, such as conceptualizing an integrated One Health-Climate Risk framework to build climate resilience against emerging infectious diseases,” Arnés Sanz said.
Another exciting project she contributed to involed writing a grant proposal on the intersection of climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and plastic pollution. She also worked on the first publication of IDAlert, a 10 million Euro project led by Professor Rocklov to build up climate resilience against infectious diseases in Europe. Arnés Sanz developed a guideline published in Lancet for researchers about accepting funding from carbon-intensive industries and maneuvering the ethics.
Her enlightening research experience in Heidelberg reaffirmed that the intersection of climate change and health was her passion, a calling that brought her to Yale University’s School of Public Health for her Master’s degree.
“It was a dream come true to get the unique opportunity to come to Yale with a fellowship from the ‘La Caixa’ foundation,” said Arnés Sanz. “YSPH offers a cutting-edge concentration on climate change and health, enabling me to center my public health training in this field.”
Arnés Sanz was driven by Yale’s academic programs that weren’t offered in Europe. She also spent a summer doing a “very enriching” internship at The Global Fund in Geneva”
At Yale, Arnés Sanz has merged scientific research with a propensity for advocacy. Engaging in the Planetary Health Alliance, an international organization based at Johns Hopkins University, Arnés Sanz served as its 2024 campus ambassador. Since then, she delivered seminars at Yale College and at the School of Public Health about the intersection of climate change and health, specifically with a focus on infectious diseases.
Parallel to her MPH coursework, Arnés Sanz is pursuing multiple research avenues, including with Professor Jeanette Ickovics at Urban Pulse for a collaboration between Yale University and the Resilient Cities Network. She also researches pandemic policy for her MPH thesis with Professor Colin Carlson. And for a class on global social entrepreneurship with the School of Management, Arnés Sanz spent two weeks in India to help social enterprises reach a bigger market. The company in question was turning used sanitary napkins into stationary such as notebooks and calendars, and turning the plastic in the wrappers into building materials.“I really appreciate the double mission, or helping the environment and public health-hygiene aspect,” Arnés Sanz said.
Arnés Sanz also attended COP28 in Dubai and COP29 in Baku, the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, which she describes as “a unique experience to translate what [she learned] in the classroom into global climate and health policy-making.”
In the future, Arnés Sanz has aspirations of working on the translation of scientific evidence into policy to protect the health of the most vulnerable populations against climate change. This May, she will graduate with an MPH in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, with a concentration on Climate Change and Health..
Michelle So is a first-year in Timothy Dwight College.
Yale Global Health Review 