Using spatial data science to uncover unequal impacts of climate change with a focus on health and wellbeing in low-income groups

Event Date: 

Wednesday, January 31, 2024 - 3:30pm to 4:45pm

Event Location: 

  • HSSB 1173

Abstract: Climate change and social injustices are critical, interwoven challenges facing humankind. Principally, while climate change is the result of grossly unequal greenhouse gas emissions, its impacts are felt most acutely by groups marginalized and minoritized by geography, gender, ethnicity, and political and economic status. Moreover, when not imagined and created using a social justice lens, the very strategies designed to address climate change exacerbate injustices by laying blame at the feet of the most marginalized. Therefore, mitigating climate change while reducing social injustice will require coordinated interventions and actions. In this presentation, I highlight contemporary health and development challenges facing poor women and children as they cope with climate change.  I describe interdisciplinary frameworks necessary for identifying and quantifying the risks that these globally marginalized populations experience.  I then present a case study focusing on how the use of high frequency spatial health and environmental data in data poor regions of the world can be combined to uncover multi-scalar factors that exacerbate or reduce adverse outcomes associated with climate change with a particular focus on pregnancy.