Editor’s note: “Research Spotlight” is a biweekly column that highlights UW centers, institutions, and labs that are assets to their respective fields. This week, columnist Sarah Pabin presents the research and practices of the Center for Health and the Global Environment, a team of professionals that aims to work climate resilience and sustainability into global health initiatives.

In 2021, a record-breaking heat wave, fueled by climate change, hit the Pacific Northwest, causing 159 injury deaths from heat exposure in Washington state. Most of these fatalities were preventable. 

A team of researchers at UW is working to make sure these tragedies don’t occur again. The Center for Health and the Global Environment (CHanGE) is a team of researchers, teachers, and practitioners that uses their expertise to incorporate climate change resilience into public health. Their research focuses on topics such as heat, vector-borne and zoonotic diseases, nutrition, wildfires and air pollution, mental health, injuries, and waterborne diseases. 

CHanGE’s involvement spans local, national, and global levels. Their mission is to train the next generation of the workforce to adapt to a changing climate and prevent future health risks, such as those caused by the Seattle heat wave.  

Kristie Ebi is a professor in departments of global health and environmental and occupational health sciences and has worked for over 30 years in climate change and health. She was hired by UW in 2014 to start CHanGE, with her research helping with assessment and policy implementation in Central America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. 

“I am fortunate to, across my career, have worked on all aspects of climate change and health,” Ebi said. “So I have some amount of expertise in a broad range of areas and use my connections with researchers around the world and the knowledge I’ve gained to help UW provide useful and usable information to increase resilience and sustainability in the health sector and the changing climate.” 

As a part of CHanGE, Ebi works with ministries of health in lower- and middle-income countries to design policies and programs that increase resilience to climate change. Some of the work includes conducting vulnerability and adaptation assessments to understand a population’s susceptibility to climate change and identify effective solutions. 

“There are parts of Africa where the most urgent need is undernutrition. There’s other parts of the world that have different needs. In many high-income countries, it’s heat and extreme weather and climate events,” Ebi said. “But, it also depends on whether you are talking about today or in the future, because the future will be fundamentally different, and looking at risks — when they could arise, how extensive they could be — is part of what we do to help inform decision-making.” 

As one of her first actions after founding CHanGE, Ebi hired Dr. Jeremy Hess, a professor in the departments of emergency medicine, environmental and occupational health sciences, and global health. Hess led one of CHanGE’s recent accomplishments, which was developing a vulnerability mapping tool called the Climate Health and Risk Tool (CHaRT). 

CHaRT was created by CHanGE in collaboration with EarthLab, introducing an interactive tool that community members and decision-makers can use to inform planning for future local climate-related health risks. CHaRT combines a variety of data to create models, such as the WA Legislative Districts Heat Health Risk model, which reports the hottest 30 days across Washington from 1991 to 2020 to characterize long-duration risk. 

CHanGE focuses heavily on community-driven solutions, collaborating with people and organizations such as the Swinomish Tribe. Hess is one of the developers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Building Resilience Against Climate Effects framework, which was incorporated into I-BRACE, a framework for Indigenous communities. The vision of CHanGE has been influenced to be more holistic partly by the work of the Swinomish Tribe, which focuses on reciprocal relationships between people and the land.

This spring, both undergraduate and graduate students can take ENVH/GHGH 479/579: Climate Change and Public Health Practice with Hess to explore climate-resilient health systems. CHanGE also offers a graduate certificate in climate change and health, which has allowed many graduate students to work with various departments of health and nongovernmental organizations. 

Reach reporter Sarah Pabin at science@dailyuw.com. X: @sarahpabin. Bluesky: @sarahpabin.bsky.social

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