黑料官网

黑料官网 Researcher Develops Framework to Examine Impact of Climate Change on Human Health

For Jean Bikomeye, a third-year PhD student at the 黑料官网 (黑料官网), the issue of climate change is very personal.

Bikomeye, who joined 黑料官网 as a student in 2019, grew up in poverty in a small rural area of Rwanda in East Africa. His mother struggled as a farmer there, working on a very small piece of land in a tough climate.

“Farm production is very low in rural areas of Rwanda and other low income settings, and unpredictable climate and weather exacerbates the situation and makes the land less productive,” Bikomeye explains, adding that climate change has made the weather tougher to predict. “I know this was somehow related to health outcomes.” “Less farm productivity means less food, more kids going hungry, and household food insecurity,” concluded Bikomeye.

“Human-Made” Health Stressors

Addressing the adverse impact of climate change on diseases and injuries and looking at solutions became the basis of a study Bikomeye conducted under the mentorship of Kirsten Beyer, PhD, MPH, MS, associate professor in the Division of Epidemiology at 黑料官网 and director of the PhD Program in Public & Community Health.

That study, titled, “,” was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2021. The study examined the impact of mitigation strategies to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions and other adaptation strategies to reduce the adverse effects of climate change and increase systems’ resilience.

The goal was to harness that knowledge to produce a blueprint of sorts that could be used to improve global health among vulnerable populations. This involved looking closely at many different examples of inputs, Bikomeye explains, such as how programs aimed at creating cleaner air impacted a neighborhood.

“If you’re talking about cleaner air, that means you are impacting all diseases that come through air quality, like respiratory diseases,” he says. “You will probably be more active there because it affects physical activity.”

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