BC3 Webinar – Heat and health: linking climate science and epidemiology

Webinar (ZOOM)

March 29 (2022), 12:00-13:00 (CET)

BC3 Webinar
“Heat and health: linking climate science and epidemiology“

Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera

Researcher at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine of the University of Bern (Switzerland)

Abstract:

Climate change is the defining public health challenge of the century. Its impacts are already visible, and current evidence agrees that these will amplify as warming progresses. The contribution of epidemiologists is crucial – not only to understand the mechanisms and the magnitude and extension of the health impacts but also to furnish policymakers with scientifically grounded evidence on solutions to protect the population. Despite years of tremendous advancements, still important gaps remain in climate change research, and new interdisciplinary approaches have been proposed to address them. This talk will aim to provide an overview of how epidemiology has contributed so far to climate change research and what are the main challenges ahead and give examples of fruitful collaborations with experts from other fields.

About the Lecturer

Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera is an early-career researcher at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine of the University of Bern (Switzerland), where she leads the research group on Climate Change and Health. She is also a member of the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research of the University of Bern. Her current research develops along the intersection between epidemiology and climate sciences to understand how different climate factors and other related environmental stressors affect health in the context of climate change. In particular, her research interests concern the evaluation of adaptation strategies, mitigation policies and air pollution co-benefits. Her research also focuses on the development of new methodologies in projections of climate change impacts, health effects of compound events and detection and attribution studies. She has led and collaborated in several large epidemiological studies on temperature-related health impacts (e.g. within the Multi-City Multi-Country (MCC) Collaborative Research Network) and nationwide studies in US, Switzerland and UK. She is also a contributing authors of the 6^th Assessment Report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). She holds an MSc in Environmental Toxicology (University of Valencia, Spain) and Epidemiology (University of Turin). Since the completion of her PhD studies (University of Valencia) in 2014, she joined different research institutions in Sweden (Umea University), Switzerland (Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute) and the UK (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine).