Climate change and health research

Karla Boluk researches sustainable tourism and citizen engagement. She is interested in ethical consumption, fair trade, corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship and volunteer tourism

Warren Dodd looks at the intersections between the social and ecological determinants of health, including a study co-authored with physicians, an environmental organization and community members that explored the experiences of individuals and communities experiencing a record wildfire season in the Northwest Territories.

Bryan Grimwood is collaborating on a new project with colleagues in Scandinavia called Envisioning Proximity Tourism with New Materialism. The project has been funded by the Academy of Finland and runs September 2019 to August 2023. A guiding aim of the project is to develop the promise of proximity tourism as a low-carbon, closer-to-home mode of travel that can help mitigate the effects or intensification of climate change. Grimwood also heads the Nature Leisure Community Research Group and researches Indigenous-settler relations, protection of water and sustainable tourism.

Craig Janes’ work looks at the impact of climate change on health systems, with a focus on access to essential health care (HIV care, maternal and child health care) in rural Africa. He has received funding through the Queen Elizabeth Advanced Scholars program to support his doctoral students from Africa in doing this work. Previous to this he led a U.S. National Science Foundation study of the impact of climate change on rural households in Central Asia.

Sharon Kirpatrick and PhD student Kirsten Lee are currently conducting a scoping review on food-related interventions implemented on post-secondary campuses that aim to address health or sustainability outcomes. This review will contribute to the broader story about how campuses are involved in the transition towards a healthy and sustainable food system and will provide recommendations on how campuses can holistically address both human and planetary health.

Brian Laird researches human exposures to, and risks from, environmental contamination. He is interested in developing tools and approaches to quantify the health risks from dietary contaminants, developing optimal intervention strategies where necessary, and exploring the extent to which nutrients offset contaminant risks.

Plinio Morita has a new initiative with Health Canada on the exploration and use of IoT (Internet of Things) data to monitor the impact of heatwaves on indoor home temperatures of seniors living independently in the community. He is also working on air pollution monitoring in Mongolia using IoT sensors distributed in the community to monitor granular, individual level exposure (air pollution in Mongolia is closely linked to climate change and climate disasters).

Kelly Skinner and her team have a new CIHR team grant that aims to learn from and enhance community capacity to address place-based priorities to inform climate change and food security action locally, regionally, and territorially in the NWT. The approach includes cross-cutting themes of Traditional Knowledge, Governance, Youth, and Sex and Gender. Understanding climate change impacts and identifying local adaptations in the food systems of Indigenous communities in the NWT is critical for the health and sustainability of communities, the environment and land.

Bryan Smale heads the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW), which reports on eight areas that affect the quality of life of Canadians and advocates for social change. One of these areas is Quality of Environment.