Theme: Public Health in a Changing Climate
Climate Change and Chronic Conditions: Disability and Inequality in a Warming World
BY NIDA KHAN It only took two weeks to forget what a lifetime of health felt like. Three years ago, I developed nerve pain in my hands and feet—one of the most challenging symptoms of having hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Once my baseline for pain changed, so did my ability to conceive of having ever felt…
From the Operating Room to the Atmosphere: The Climate Impact of Inhaled Anesthetics
BY JOSHUA CHEN A 2022 study found that over 300 million people worldwide were administered anesthesia for surgery procedures every year1. With life-saving surgical procedures on the rise and the ever-present desire to keep them as painless as possible, the number of patients administered anesthesia every year is also rising2. While anesthetics can be administered…
Settler Colonialism Conspiring as Climate Change
BY MIIGIS CURLEY Recognizing that colonial activity is not limited to the past but rather a consistent factor dictating Indigenous life is critical to understanding how climate change creates communal displacement from homelands and cultural genocide. Various Indigenous communities in America and Oceania experience attest to the contemporary navigation of colonial violence. Who are leading…
Doctors Given Borders: The Causes and Costs of US IMG Concentration in Primary Care
BY GRACE UDOH The United States is facing a healthcare workforce shortage projected to reach a crippling 3.2 million by the year 2026¹. These numbers are not expected to decrease anytime soon, with an average of 1.8 million job openings in various areas of the US healthcare system every year². International Medical Graduates have been…
Microplastics and Infertility: An Invisible Crisis
BY SAM OBIOMA According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), over 430 million tons of plastic are produced every year. Via ultraviolet (UV) radiation, fragmentation, and even bacteria, plastic is broken down from everyday products into smaller fragments which, over time, have been found in our air, food, and water. Microplastics have…
Plague and the Little Ice Age: A Harbinger of What is to Come?
BY PAIGE MAHONEY For Europeans, the middle of the 1300s was marked by cold and death. What scientists and historians have now deemed the Little Ice Age started at the beginning of the century, bringing with it famine as crops failed due to poor growing conditions. At the same time, the plague was devastating the…
The Future of Construction: Living, Self-Healing Concrete
BY SHARNA SAHA Concrete is everywhere—our roads, bridges, buildings, and even sewage systems depend on it. But do we ever stop to consider its true impact? The construction industry uses 30 billion metric tons of concrete annually—equivalent to six Pyramids of Giza—yet its production is one of the largest contributors to global carbon emissions. Cement,…
From Closet to Catastrophe: The Climate-Driven Spread of Textile Contaminants
BY DAVID WOODS The textile industry is commonly criticized for its excessive water consumption and landfill waste, but it is often underestimated as a contributing factor to adverse public health impacts and negative environmental consequences. Textiles have become embedded in the human identity in a way that cannot be undone. Textiles are what make up…
The Invisible Scars of Wildfires
BY ESSEY AFEWERKI 57,000 acres of land in Los Angeles were razed in the span of 3 weeks from January 7th to 27th at the start of this year. The scorched earth across the Palisades and Eaton regions swallowed more land than exists in the whole of Manhattan or Washington DC 1. The immediate destruction…
The Climate Crisis in Your Mind: How Air Pollution and Heat are Rewiring our Brains
BY CONSTANZA BINEY What if the greatest threat to your brain wasn’t genetics or aging, but rather the changing climate? Climate change has long been recognized for its impacts on physical health, heightening respiratory conditions and the spread of infectious disease. However, its effects on the brain remain an underrecognized crisis. Emerging research reveals that…
Microplastics, Climate Change, and Women’s Hormonal Health: Unraveling the Impact of Climate Change on Women’s Health
BY NARDEEN GEBRAEEL AND ASHLEY RAFFELI Microplastics and climate change represent two environmental crises that significantly impact women’s hormonal health. These disruptions occur through multiple pathways, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plastics and climate-induced physiological stressors. Exposure to these environmental hazards can contribute to hormonal imbalances, infertility, pregnancy complications, and long-term metabolic and reproductive disorders.1…
The Invisible Health Crisis
BY YASMIN MOHAMMED The new year began with the outbreak of some of the deadliest fires in California’s history. What started as a small blaze quickly spread across nearly 40,000 acres of southern California’s dry terrain, destroying thousands of structures, claiming lives, and displacing entire communities [8]. Strong winds and prolonged drought conditions, followed by…
The Impact of Wildfire Smoke on Pregnancy Outcomes
BY MICHELLE CHEON Rising global temperatures and their contribution to prolonged droughts have led to an increase in both the frequency and intensity of wildfires. This escalation has profound consequences on air quality, exposing millions of individuals to hazardous smoke. Among the most vulnerable populations to decreasing air quality are pregnant individuals, for whom wildfire…
The Impact of Microplastic Ingestion on Gut Microbiota and Digestive Health
BY DAYA BAUM Microplastics (MPs), defined as plastic particles measuring less than 5 mm, have emerged as a pervasive environmental contaminant, raising significant concerns about their impact on human health. These particles originate from industrial processes that produce microplastics by the unintentional release of by-products, deterioration of everyday consumer products, and degradation of larger plastic…
Losing Sleep Over Climate Change: The Hidden Impact of Rising Temperatures
BY LIZZIE FISHER Polluters might claim they don’t “lose sleep” over their actions, but in reality, they—along with millions of others around the world—do. A study published in One Earth, examined sleep patterns of more than 47,000 individuals across 68 countries over six months. Using wristband data, researchers found that rising ambient temperatures significantly disrupt…
Financing Climate Change Adaptation in the Healthcare Sector
BY SEBASTIAN CORDERO MUNIZ Hurricanes, wildfires, blizzards. These are the destructive forces of nature associated with climate change. When considering the impacts of these disasters, public discourse is often confined to the damage on infrastructure and the economy. This leaves out another important and particularly devastating victim of climate change: health. Climate change and its…
Climate-Driven Barriers to Polio Eradication: A Case Study in Pakistan
BY LANXI LIN As the world edges closer to eradicating infectious diseases, the Middle East remains a battleground, where rising temperatures and extreme weather events fueled by climate change are threatening to undo decades of progress in public health vaccine efforts. Pakistan, a Middle Eastern country nestled between India and Afghanistan, is one of the…
Cristina Arnés Sanz: A Rising Global Health Leader
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…
The Microscopic Burden of Climate Change: Increasing Risks of Dengue Virus in a Hotter World
BY CRISTINA GARCIA Dengue, a viral illness transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, remains one of the world’s most neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), despite its growing burden. The global incidence of dengue has spiked during the past few decades, with the World Health Organization documenting a tenfold rise in cases from 2000 to 2019.1 In 2023 alone,…
Prioritizing Both People and Planet: How the NGO Health in Harmony Has Changed the Way Global Health and Climate Conservation Are Done
BY TOMEKA FRIESON What if I told you that there was an organization that not only cared for the planet but also for the people who call it home? More than just a conservation institution that focuses on regenerating Earth’s rainforests or maintaining species diversity, this organization buys back chainsaws, encourages local entrepreneurship, and provides…
Paula Kavathas: A Profile
BY BLAKE MAULSBY Paula Kavathas has led an illustrious career that has charted new ground in both immunobiology and diversity in science. Since a young age, Kavathas was always fascinated by science and medicine and thus aspired to shape her career around these interests. While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a friend of Kavathas was…
A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles
BY VIOLET AFFLECK I spent the January fires in Los Angeles arguing with my mother in a hotel room. She was shell-shocked, astonished at the scale of destruction in the neighborhood where she raised myself and my siblings. I was surprised at her surprise: as a lifelong Angelena and climate-literate member of generation Z, my…
Health, Climate, and Herring in Sitka
BY WILL SALAVERRY How does the way salmon dig their redds (nests) into the riverbed affect the flow of water downstream toward the sea? How does this, in turn, affect the health of the forest, laced by the rushing water that the salmon have guided through the underbrush? How does that ancient engineering influence the…
The Price Isn’t Right: The Cost of Colonialism and Climate Change in Pakistan
BY F. KHAN The boy is caught mid-jump, his toothy smile and extended limbs in kinetic motion, a striking contrast to the still waters corralled by the Norris Reservoir1 in Rocky Top, TN. Its construction began in 1933, making it the first dam to be built by the landmark Tennessee Valley Authority legislation, an agency…
Climate Change, Warfare, and Food Insecurity: When Agricultural Innovation Isn’t Enough
BY MYLA TOLIVER As Beth Bechdol, Deputy Director of the Food and Agriculture Association, once argued, “there is no food security without peace, and no peace without food security,” especially not with climate change.1 Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the cost of human commercial activities on the environment has been so extreme that…
Fields, Fires, and Fungi: Valley Fever in the Changing Environment
BY LOLYN TEJEDA LEMUS A cough can mean anything: a cold, a sore throat, a reflex after a perhaps over-eager sip of water. But as winds pick up earthy remnants of recent harvests, how certain can you be that a cough is benign and not a sign of something treacherous beneath your feet. Therein lies…
The Danger of American Isolationism
BY NIRAJ SRIVASTAVA On his first day back in presidential office, Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 12 months.1 His signature marks an alarming descent into American isolationism regarding health, throwing the future of global health in peril. Since the WHO’s inception in 1948, the…
The True Cost of Mining in a Changing Climate: The Global Health Crisis in South America’s Yanomami Territory
BY DEBBIE MOJEKWU “We want to live, we want our peace back and our territory,” says Júnior Hekurari, health leader of the Yanomami people in Roraima state, Brazil.1 Mining has been a culturally accepted practice since prehistoric times, with people seeking invaluable resources, such as gold, in the deepest cores of the earth. However, what…
Cooked: How Extreme Heat Became America’s Deadliest Natural Disaster
BY RISHI SHAH In 2024, Earth experienced its hottest year on record, with global temperatures soaring 1.47°C (2.65°F) above pre-industrial revolution levels—an alarming milestone in a trajectory that shows no sign of slowing.1 Extreme heat is now the deadliest weather-related hazard in the United States, killing more people annually than hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes combined.2…
Trapped in the Fire: How the Sonoma County Ag Pass Risks Farmworkers’ Lives
BY ANDREA CHOW Joan Didion, a writer and essayist of California notoriety, once wrote that the Santa Ana winds make mechanistic creatures out of all of us. In late fall and early winter, Californians know what it is like to lick our cracked lips, scratch at our wrinkled knuckles, and grip the edges of our…
As Levees Collapse, Hospitals Shutter: How Climate Change is Fanning the Flames in Rural Healthcare
BY SEIN LEE On a scorching June afternoon in Oregon in 2021, farmer Sebastian Francisco Perez collapsed while moving irrigation pipes at a plant nursery.1 His coworkers tried desperately to resuscitate him, but it was too late—Perez had died from overheating and dehydration. The nearest hospital was a 30-minute drive away, far too distant to…
Climate Change and Cardiovascular Disease: Uncovering the Growing Threat to Public Health
BY KAI ELLIS What if the air you breathe, the heat you feel, and the storms you endure were silently increasing your risk of heart disease? Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue—it’s a direct threat to human health, particularly cardiovascular health. Rising global temperatures, worsening air pollution, and more frequent extreme weather…
The Hidden Climate Crisis of Lima’s Hillside Communities: A Journey into Peru’s Climate Vulnerability
BY TARA KIM On the outskirts of Lima, Peru’s sprawling capital, thousands of homes cling to desert cliffs. They shouldn’t be there—these precarious dwellings built hastily with concrete blocks, wood, and even scrap materials, defy both gravity and common sense. Yet, there they are in these “pueblos jóvenes” (young towns), standing as a testament to…
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