A new Penn State initiative will focus on climate change and how extreme weather events impact human health, especially in underserved populations across the globe.
The Social Science Research Institute’s (SSRI) Climate, Society and Health Initiative aims to help research move beyond documentation of climate events and their association with health threats to strategies that support individual and community resilience.
“Penn State has an extraordinary depth and breadth in climate science research and strong leadership from the Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE) and the new Penn State Climate Consortium,” said SSRI Director Deborah Ehrenthal. “The new SSRI initiative will complement these efforts by engaging faculty researchers in the social and behavioral sciences who bring deep interdisciplinary experience needed for this new research area.”
According to Virginia Silvis, a postdoctoral scholar in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute working on climate change and community resilience, the initiative is especially important because the effects of climate change are likely to disproportionately impact the health of disadvantaged populations around the world.
“The impact of climate change on people and their lives is one of the most urgent challenges we face today,” Silvis said. “It will take the perspective of researchers from both the social and behavioral sciences and climate science communities working together and speaking the same language.”
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