CCUH Research
Description of the research funded by CCUH
Research Project Summary
CCUH’s research focuses on extreme temperatures and mortality in five cities across North and South America: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Guatemala City (Guatemala), Panama City (Panama), and Philadelphia (USA). The CCUH explores how neighborhood-level modifiers, such as social, physical, and natural environment characteristics, affect heat-related health risks. Our main goal is to demonstrate to what extent neighborhood and individual factors affect heat-related mortality by analyzing how microclimates and urban heat island effects interact with factors such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status to varyingly impact susceptibility to heat.
This study examines how heat affects mortality across neighborhoods within low- and middle- income cities in Latin America, and in the U.S. Studying these cross-country differences maximizes variability to ensure research results are generalizable across multiple settings. CCUH also employes novel research methods to examine the mechanisms of climate-related health disparities by developing an approach that synthesizes methods from climate epidemiology, spatial statistics, and health disparity theory.
Pilot Summaries
The CCUH awarded and supported pilot projects that explore the consequences of climate change on urban health. This program encouraged proposals led by transdisciplinary teams, early-career researchers, and diverse investigators who bring new perspectives to the complex challenges posed by climate change. By generating preliminary data and insights, these pilot projects lay the groundwork for future larger-scale, transdisciplinary research efforts. CCUH provided funding for four pilot projects:
Extreme heat is an acute contributor to mortality, and heat waves will continue to become more frequent over the next 100 years. Yet little research investigates the impact of extreme heat among incarcerated populations. This interdisciplinary project applies epidemiologic, econometric, and policy surveillance methods to develop a novel database of heat-related prison conditions and policies and examine temperature-mortality associations in all U.S. state prisons (2000 - 2019). By linking data on overcrowding and air conditioning, as well as prison operating procedures and heat protection measures to mortality data this project will provide the first national evaluation of modifiable conditions to reduce heat-related mortality among imprisoned populations.
Urban heat is linked to increased mortality risks from unintentional injuries, including road traffic injuries - a concern in California, where traffic fatalities surged by 28% between 2019 and 2022. This study addresses three critical gaps within the relevant literature:1) assessing temperature-road injury associations across 75 California cities with over 100,000 residents; 2) demonstrate the intensification of the temperature-road injury association after accounting for fluctuations in daily traffic volume; and 3) study the association of interest in a large sample of CA cities , including city-specific factors, such as climatic patterns, built environment characteristics, and socioeconomic status. Using the novel multi-city time-stratified case-crossover study design, these findings stand to complement an ongoing SALURBAL project and inform future broader US research initiatives. These findings offer crucial insights into mitigating public health risks associated with road safety and heat management, which have long been pressing concerns for vulnerable communities.
Over 80% of United States residents live in urban areas, with increasing exposure to ambient heat due to the compounding effects of climate change and the urban heat island effect. Nationwide, there are 46 million people diagnosed with chronic kidney disease (CKD), who may be particularly susceptible to health risks from heat, as extreme heat causes renal system dysfunction. Sparse previous literature indicates increased risk of death or hospitalization immediately after extreme heat events among those undergoing end-stage CKD treatment. However, little is known about the effects of heat on the health and healthcare needs of urban residents living with CKD during (and after) heat events, in the context of rising urban heat exposures. This project examines patterns of both inpatient and outpatient healthcare use among urban-dwelling Medicaid/Medicare enrollees with CKD, compared to Medicaid/Medicare enrollees without CKD. A new collaboration with researchers from the AJ Drexel Autism Institute and the Urban Health Collaborative is established for this pilot project, which will provide preliminary data to support future, larger grants investigating the needs of urban CKD patients during heat and other climate-related events (e.g., floods) and in relation to different axes of disparity (e.g., race/ethnicity and socioeconomic factors).