Burke Fellow Seminar Series: What Impact Do Extreme Weather Events Have on Our Health?

What do Pardis Sabeti, Raj Panjabi and Margaret Bourdeaux have in common? They are all former HGHI Burke Fellows! Join us for a new monthly seminar series to hear from this year’s Burke fellows about their innovative research and teaching projects.

Renee Salas, MD, MPH, MS

“Impact of Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters on Healthcare Utilization, Outcomes, and Cost for Elderly Medicare Beneficiaries”

Globally, climate change is having the biggest health impacts on populations in developing countries, which have contributed least to the emission of the greenhouse gases stimulating this phenomenon. Specifically, climate change is causing an increased frequency and/or severity of extreme weather events. While we know extreme weather events negatively impact health and increase the utilization of healthcare, current studies are limited in scope and applicability. Understanding the health and healthcare impacts of climate change driven extreme weather within the U.S., and specifically, population displacement has significant global health implications including informing evidence-based prevention.

Renee Salas is a clinical instructor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and an emergency medicine physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She received her Doctor of Medicine from the innovative five-year medical school program to train physician-investigators at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. She concurrently obtained a Master of Science in Clinical Research from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Subsequently, she received a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health with a concentration in environmental health while completing a Fellowship in Wilderness Medicine at MGH.