Climate Change and Health

Climate change impacts are vast and will impact the health of all communities.

For our study, with community partner NC FIELD out of eastern North Carolina, we are centering farmworker health for several reasons. The farmworker occupation means that they are at increased vulnerabilities for climate change through extreme heat and increased pesticide exposures (which may increase as pest changes occur).

We are working on piloting the use of wearables to collect information on heat exposure and cardiovascular health indicators over time. We are also developing a project to extend this work to include emotional and mental health measures to better examine the role of climate change beyond physical health outcomes.