Health Impacts of Extreme Heat

Originally aired May 14, 2020

The first webinar in an ASU series on extreme heat. Extreme heat is a hazard to human health and well-being, with health impacts dependent on individual coping capacity, personal-to-city-level heat mitigation strategies, and access to cooling infrastructure. Current and future conditions of extreme heat disproportionately impact communities already facing inequities. This webinar addresses current research and applications on human health and extreme heat at the individual, community, and city levels — providing climate action guidance to city leaders, practitioners, and the public — and assesses additional burdens resulting from COVID-19.

Speakers

Juli Trtanj

One Health and Integrated Climate and Weather Extremes Research Lead, NOAA

Juli Trtanj is responsible for developing and implementing NOAA’s Health Strategy across NOAA and with federal, state, local, and international partners. She leads efforts to build the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) in partnership with the CDC, FEMA, OSHA, and other agencies, and co-chairs the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Change and Human Health Group. She was a Convening Lead Author for the Water-Related Illness chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

Patricia Solís, PhD

Executive Director, Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, Arizona State University

Patricia Solís is Executive Director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University, a campus-wide effort to link community needs with research innovations in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is also Co-Founder and Director of YouthMappers, a consortium of more than 120 universities in 38 countries that creates and uses open spatial data for humanitarian and development needs in collaboration with USAID. She previously served as Co-Director of the Center for Geospatial Technology at Texas Tech University.

Melissa Guardado

Assistant Research Professor, Healthy Urban Environments (HUE), Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, ASU

Melissa Guardado is an Assistant Research Professor at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, working for the Healthy Urban Environments Initiative (HUE) and Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER). Her research focuses on adaptation, equity, vulnerability, urban policy, and governance for the mitigation and adaptation to extreme heat and urban heat island effects. She works with the City of Phoenix to formulate a comprehensive heat reduction strategy and collaborates with The Nature Conservancy and community-based organizations to create neighborhood heat solutions.