iSchool Researcher Part of $3.8M NIH Grant to Fund Center on Climate Change and Health

A $3.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund planning for a new University of Arizona center focusing on climate change and public health. The Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health, or SCORCH, will be housed in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and focus on research and programs to help communities in Arizona and other hot, arid regions adapt to climate-driven health threats.

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School of Information Assistant Professor Cristian Román-Palacios, a biologist with expertise in phylogenetics, biostatistics and machine learning, will lead data management and visualization training activities aligned with the new center’s Integrated Data Visualization Core (IDVC). The IDVC’s goal is to implement professional development and outreach initiatives tailored for climate change and health applications delivered by SCORCH.

“My role will focus on leading the evaluation process to identify training needs, with support from other members in IDVC and SCORCH,” says Román-Palacios. “This evaluation working group will compile existing data on training needs among SCORCH members and identify training gaps.”

SCORCH will bring together transdisciplinary research groups to conduct team-science projects to address the environmental health needs of arid lands communities adapting to climate change. The center’s overarching mission is to improve health equity across the lifespan by enhancing existing community partnerships and supporting adaptation efforts by Indigenous, Latinx, low-resource urban and rural communities in the Southwestern United States and globally, where arid lands are home to one in three people, totaling a population of more than two billion.

Climate change factors prevalent in the desert Southwest—ranging from extreme heat to flooding, biodiversity loss to increased pathogens—will forecast the future concerns of much of the rest of the U.S. and the world. Accordingly, SCORCH’s mission impacts not only the health and wellbeing of the arid Southwest populations, but people across the world living in arid lands. 

Co-principal investigators from the Zuckerman College of Public Health, Professor Kacy Ernst and Assistant Research Professor Mona Arora, as well as Joe Hoover, assistant professor of environmental sciences in the College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences, envision SCORCH as a collaboration that will serve a range of communities, including low-resource urban and rural populations, Indigenous peoples and Spanish-speaking groups.

SCORCH will provide planning, coordination and resources for three research focus areas:

• Health impacts of extreme weather events
• Forecasting and early warning
• Adaptive responses to the built environment

Two research projects are funded as part of the three-year planning period. One project, led by Melissa Furlong, assistant professor in the Zuckerman College of Public Heath, is designed to examine how exposure to extreme heat during pregnancy impacts attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and learning outcomes in children. The other project, led by Shujuan Li, associate professor in the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, focuses on understanding the health trade-offs in greenspace planning decisions and developing a tool that can predict the health outcomes of contrasting greenspace designs.

SCORCH activities will focus on three key pillars:

• Systems Thinking: SCORCH will investigate how existing support systems, infrastructure and programs can respond to climate change using a cross-disciplinary approach that reaches across organizations and expertise to find solutions. A flexible and integrated data core will be developed to facilitate this process and tackle complex problems.
• Health Equity: SCORCH will work with partners to evaluate needs and conduct collaborative research that engages the community with the science. In responding to climate threats, equity will be prioritized by cultivating relationships with local and global partners in arid regions.
• From Science to Solutions: SCORCH will develop responsive and resilient systems that can adapt to climate impacts. In collaboration with community organizations, the team will connect research knowledge with practical implementation. They will foster partnerships with the private sector to scale solutions and build relationships with policymakers to guide action and lead adaptation.

The broader university community will be engaged through seed grant programs and workshops to develop innovative research and solutions. The center’s scientific studies will build on a foundation of data to provide benchmarks and insights that will guide decision-makers to prepare for the complex health challenges posed by climate change and protect communities.

In addition to the iSchool’s Román-Palacios, fellow researchers Furlong and Li, and lead investigators Arora, Hoover and Ernst, the SCORCH team includes Zuckerman College of Public Health researchers Paloma Beamer, professor and BIO5 Institute member, Dean Billheimer, professor and BIO5 Institute member, Chris Lim, assistant professor, and Yiwen Liu, assistant professor; College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture assistant professors Ladd Keith and Mackenzie Waller; and Huaqing Wang, assistant professor in the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences at Utah State University.
 

Learn more about the Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health, or explore iSchool research areas and research labs.