December 16, 2025

Over the next five years, a researcher from the Urban Health Collaborative at the Dornsife School of Public Health will work with an international team of researchers granted $3.9M to study the mental health effects of climate-change-related heat exposure on urban youth. 

Josiah Kephart, a researcher from the Urban Health Collaborative (UHC) and the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Dornsife School of Public Health, has been awarded a $3.9-million grant along with six other researchers in Canada, Mexico, and Argentina to study how young people’s mental health is impacted by heat in cities. 

Given by the U.K.-based Wellcome Trust, the five-year grant will support the YUCA (Youth in Urban Centres across the Americas: Understanding and addressing heat impacts on mental health) project, allowing the researchers to "characterize mechanisms at the environmental, social, physiological, and biological levels linking heat exposure to mental health among urban youth (16-35 years) in the Americas." 

“There is growing evidence that heat has an impact on mental health in young people, but we don’t have a clear understanding of why. This study will look at a wide range of different pathways that might explain this connection, including sleep, social isolation, physical activity, brain function, and cardiovascular function, to help us understand the specific mechanisms by which heat affects mental health. Our findings will help us understand what can be done to protect mental health in young people during this time of rising global temperatures”, said Kephart, an Assistant Professor at the UHC and a co-Principal Investigator on the study. 

"During the warmer periods of the year we will follow cohorts of youth experiencing at least mild symptoms of depression, anxiety and psychosis and who may benefit from mental health care in Montreal, Querétaro (Mexico), and Buenos Aires (Argentina). We will adapt existing mental health services to integrate intervention components that protect mental health in the context of heat and that have been co-designed with youth." said Jura Augustinavicius, an Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) School of Public Health and the study’s lead investigator. 

Joining Kephart and Augustinavicius are Guido Simonelli (of UdeM and the CIUSSS NIM Research Centre), Mallar Chakravarty and Lani Cupo (of McGill University and the affiliated Douglas Research Centre in Montreal), Eduardo Garza-Villarreal (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in Querétaro) and Carolina Abulafia (Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina and CONICET, in Buenos Aires). 

Heat Waves Expected To Triple, At Least 

The impact of climate change in urban centres across the Americas is clear: temperatures are increasing, and heatwaves are becoming more frequent. Indeed, they're expected to at least triple in the coming decades, the researchers say, and exposure to heat has profound systemic negative effects on people's physical and mental health. 

What's the impact on young people? "We know that adolescence and young adulthood constitute a dynamic period of social, neuropsychological, and biological changes," said Augustinavicius. 

"Emerging evidence suggests that short-term fluctuations in temperature are a risk factor for mental illness, and elevated temperatures and heat waves are associated with increased risk of suicide and mental health-related hospital admissions, including among youth." 

 "In this project, we will examine exactly how heat affects mental health, then take those findings and integrate them directly into existing mental health services in these cities to understand better what can be done to protect mental health among our young people,” Kephart adds. 

Not Just Hospitalizations and Suicides

Much of the literature on heat and mental health relies on linking ambient temperature to hospital visits and suicides, the researchers say.  

But other approaches are needed, "to look at a range of mental health outcomes, not only the most severe outcomes, and to understand the mechanistic relationships between heat exposure and mental health," said Augustinavicius. 

"This can help to define and refine heat adaptation interventions that can be embedded within existing systems of mental health care and these interventions should be co-designed with youth," she said. 

"The evidence from this project will allow us to better target interventions to support youth mental health as part of adaptation to climate change."