Climate change is one of the key public health threats of our modern time. Penn Nursing faculty are spearheading vital research and community engagement at the intersection of climate change and public health.
“Nurses are well equipped to understand the multiplicity of ways that climate change can impact someone’s health,” says Sara F. Jacoby, an associate professor of nursing at Penn’s School of Nursing. Leaders like Jacoby are driving nursing efforts to stand as a frontline defense against health crises influenced by our changing planet and preparing nursing students to be the future of those critical efforts.
Certain Philadelphia neighborhoods—particularly those with little green space amid the dark pavement— can become “heat islands” in the summer months, reaching temperatures as much as 12 degrees hotter than other communities in the city. But it’s not just the physical impacts of extreme heat that worry Jacoby, whose research areas include the social and structural factors related to firearm violence.
“In city environments, one of the most emergent exposures correlated to increased risk for firearm violence is heat, specifically heat islands,” she says. “Climate change will likely make things worse in places where there is already a relationship between extreme heat and endemic firearm violence.”
That’s why Jacoby, through Penn4C, a collaborative of Penn Nursing and Penn Engineering, is working with North10, a community-focused nonprofit serving the Hunting Park-East Tioga neighborhood, on solutions for the detrimental “heat island” effect. The inaugural effort is a solar-powered heat shelter, a cooling station that looks like a bus shelter and is designed by Dorit Aviv, an assistant professor of architecture at the Weitzman School of Design. The shelter was transported to the neighborhood for a test this past summer so residents could give feedback on the design.
At the Penrose School in Philadelphia, second- and fourth-graders sketched flood waters rising toward houses as children stand nearby with their arms raised in terror. The children, who live in Eastwick (a neighborhood that sits beside Darby Creek in the southwestern area of the city) worry when it rains, so accustomed are they to their community’s frequent flooding, says Jennifer A. Pinto-Martin, the Viola MacInnes/Independence Professor of Nursing. The problem is likely to worsen as climate change intensifies.
Pinto-Martin, an epidemiologist, received a pilot grant from the Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology (CEET) at the Perelman School of Medicine to study how climate change education might ease childrens’ fears. The one-year study was adapted from Pinto-Martin’s climate work in the Galapagos with Michael Weisberg, the Bess W. Heyman President’s Distinguished Professor, Chair of Philosophy, and deputy director of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Eastwick project began by measuring students’ baseline climate concerns using an “eco-anxiety” scale developed by an Ohio psychology professor. “Children are very aware of the changing climate, are very worried about it and are very unsure about how to cope,” Pinto-Martin says.
And Penn Nursing students are preparing to address health disparities caused by climate change as well, including hearing from world-renowned nurse experts working on climate change research and policy. The School hosted two nurse leaders in this area last spring to share their perspectives about how students can contribute to a more sustainable future, both for their patients and the health care sector at large, which is responsible for an estimated 8.5% of greenhouse gas emissions in the country.
Read more at Penn Nursing News.
