2023 Cohort of HGHI Burke Climate and Health Fellows

Annikki Herranen-Tabibi (she/her) is a medical and environmental anthropologist of the Circumpolar Arctic. She is engaged in long-term ethnographic research in Sápmi, the transborder homeland of the Indigenous Sámi people. Her scholarly work defines a space for research and collaborative action at the intersections of global health with medical and environmental humanities and social sciences. Across these arenas, her work is grounded in questions of care – interpersonal, intergenerational, and ecological.
As Burke Climate and Health Fellow, Annikki will conduct research on the health effects of climate-induced disruptions to webs of Arctic subsistence livelihoods, as well as diverse responses to those effects, in Sápmi. With a focus on cryosphere collapse – i.e., the accelerating retreat of frozen water across the Earth system – in the permafrost peatlands of Sápmi, she will examine individual and collective practices of caring for land and land-based knowledge amidst climate-induced transformations.
Annikki holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology from Harvard (Ph.D., 2022). Her dissertation, Resurgent Ecologies of Care: An Ethnography from Deanuleahki, Sápmi, examined transformations in kin-based caregiving practices and relationships in Sápmi amidst Nordic welfare state development since the Second World War. It was based on 28 months (2014-2018) of ethnographic research in Deanuleahki, a river valley along the northernmost reaches of the Finnish-Norwegian state border.

In addition to her doctorate, Annikki holds a BA and MA in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and Yale University, respectively, and is a United World College of the Atlantic alumna.

Project Title: “Land, Life, and Health in a Thawing Arctic”

Project Description: This study examines the health effects of climate-induced disruptions to webs of Arctic subsistence livelihoods in the permafrost peatlands of Sápmi, and local responses to these disruptions – including community-driven practices of care, adaptation, and protection. It foregrounds not only the adverse health effects of accelerating climate change, but also the intergenerational striving to sustain Indigenous well-being and sovereignty in its midst. Through the co-generation of knowledge, it foregrounds Arctic Indigenous lived experience of climate change’s health dimensions while advancing dialogue with national governments and the global health and scientific communities on major challenges of policy and practice.
It seeks to produce novel, experientially grounded insights about the emerging mental and physical health effects of drastic environmental transformation – including the psychosocial impacts of the precarity or loss of culturally significant species and livelihood practices, rising concerns about contamination amidst permafrost thaw, and the physical health effects of climate-induced dietary changes. In so doing, it focuses on Sámi-led responses to climate-induced health disruptions, including community-driven practices of care, adaptation, and protection. It asks: How are the health effects of permafrost thaw in peatland ecosystems locally understood in Sápmi? What responses and solutions emerge from the encounters of local, Indigenous, and traditional ecological knowledge with research scientists (including biologists and epidemiologists) examining such transformations?

Jenny Lee is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health . She received an M.S. in Biostatistics from Yale University and received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Harvard University. Her work has focused on assessing the health impacts of air pollution on vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, children, and the elderly, with an aim to find policy implications that provide actionable insights for policymakers. Her research focuses on developing statistical methods for assessing the impact of exposure to multi-pollutant mixtures during pregnancy on high-dimensional epigenetic markers in newborns, and developing causal inference methods for clustered data in environmental health to assess effects of air pollution on socioeconomically disadvantaged children and elderly in the U.S. As a Burke Climate and Health Fellow, she will work with Professors Rachel Nethery and Francesca Dominici to study the adverse health effects of air pollution on socioeconomically disadvantaged children in the U.S and examine the impact of Medicaid eligibility thresholds on health outcomes.

Project Title: “Develop a causal inference method to assess the health impacts of long-term exposure to air pollution on low-income children in the US Medicaid program”

Project Description: The adverse health impacts of air pollution are particularly pronounced among children as their immature respiratory, neurological, and immune systems are still developing, which makes them more susceptible to damage from air pollution. Socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals and families face additional challenges due to their increased likelihood of residing in areas with higher air pollution levels, limited access to healthcare, and potential financial constraints in mitigating exposure risks. However, there is a limited understanding of the adverse effects of exposure to fine particulate matter on socioeconomically disadvantaged children. This fellowship project aims to address this knowledge gap by investigating the relationship between exposure and respiratory hospitalization in socioeconomically disadvantaged children. Claims data from the U.S. Medicaid program will be utilized, which provides health coverage for approximately 40% of children in the country from low-income families or those with disabilities. We aim to develop a causal inference method to estimate the causal ERF of long-term exposure and respiratory hospitalization using this data, while also exploring the impact of varying Medicaid eligibility thresholds.