Climate Change and a ‘Host of Mental Health Outcomes’.

The raging wildfires in California, summer snowfall in California, and record-breaking hurricanes across multiple states are just the latest examples of the growing challenges and worsening consequences of climate change.

“The conversation has shifted away from the theoretical ‘what will happen in 20 to 50 years,’ to ‘how can we effectively communicate how people can protect themselves during more extreme and more frequent events right now,’” says Amruta Nori-Sarma, postdoctoral associate in climate and health in the Department of Environmental Health.

It is a subject that Nori-Sarma has studied for several years, having received a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering at Princeton University, an MPH in environmental health policy at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, a PhD in environmental health sciences from Yale University’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and a Fulbright fellowship to study the health impact of extreme weather events in low-income communities in northern India.

In August, she joined the School of Public Health to complete a postdoctoral fellowship that she had begun last year at Brown University School of Public Health, with Gregory Wellenius as her advisor, before Wellenius moved to SPH in January to become the director of the new Program on Climate and Health and a professor of environmental health. For her fellowship, Nori-Sarma has focused her research on the physical and mental health impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations in the United States.

“I’ve become particularly interested in understanding how extreme events impact mental health outcomes,” says Nori-Sarma. Previous research on this topic has largely focused on single events, she says—such as Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy—but she is examining how people’s mental health is affected across the occurrence of multiple events, including hurricanes, heat waves, inland flooding, droughts, wildfires, and extreme exposure to air pollution.

“There are a host of mental health outcomes that have been associated with extreme weather events,” says Nori-Sarma. “Those most studied include PTSD in the wake of natural disasters, which can cause chronic illness in the long term, but we are also interested in changes in anxiety and depression, as well as psychosocial wellbeing and emotional resilience.”

Compounding the problem is that certain weather events rarely occur on their own, she says. “Hurricanes happen during the summertime, so they often occur with higher temperatures.” In collaboration with Wellenius and Sandro Galea, dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Nori-Sarma is analyzing a large healthcare utilization data set to examine changes in mental health outcomes across the span of several natural disasters and extreme weather events.

Nori-Sarma says she emphasizes the human health aspect of climate change because it is a global public health issue that affects all individuals.

“Different people will experience different types of extreme weather, but everyone is exposed to some subset of extreme weather events,” she says. “People on the West Coast may not be exposed to hurricanes, but they’re definitely exposed to wildfires and and droughts, so I think this enables us to have a different conversation, from a practical perspective, on how we can help people protect their health.”

Nori-Sarma says the Program on Climate and Health, which focuses on research, training, and translation of climate change issues, is the perfect opportunity for SPH to be at the helm of climate change research and develop sustainable solutions through collaborations across departments and across the university.

“This program presents an amazing opportunity for BU to become a leading institution that’s at the forefront of what is a really vital research agenda,” she says. “I think it will continue to expand as world-class research in the coming years, and I’m very excited to contribute to that effort.”

—Jillian McKoy