At the Ecological and Community Opportunities for Health (ECO-Health) Center, we seek to understand how our health is affected by extreme weather events, including wildfires and extreme heat. ECO-Health joins a network of P20 research centers across the United States that are funded by the National Institutes of Health to address these kinds of health challenges.
Our work is structured around three primary areas.
Training and Career Development
We train researchers who can give us new evidence about how extreme weather affects our health.
Research
We conduct research studies to understand these health risks and create interventions that can solve them. We focus on how things like poverty, hunger, and the physical places where we live increase the risk of poor health in the communities that are most impacted by higher temperatures and wildfire smoke.
Community Engagement
We include community members in research and build their ability to create solutions that address the impact of extreme weather on their health and wellbeing.
Our Network
Based at the University of California, ECO-Health is supported by the UC Center for Climate, Health and Equity, UC San Francisco’s Partnerships for Research in Implementation Science for Equity (PRISE) Center, and UC San Diego’s Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation (CCCIA).
Our Team
Our multidisciplinary team of scientists have clinical, environmental, epidemiological, and social sciences expertise.
- Principal investigators: Dr. Sheri Weiser (UCSF), Dr. Arianne Teherani (UCSF), Dr. Tarik Benmarhnia (UCSD)
- Community Engagement Leads: Dr. Emily Arnold (UCSF), Dr. David J. X. González (UCB)
- Research Leads: Dr. Neeta Thakur (UCSF), Dr. Amy Padula (UCSF)
- Co-Investigators: Dr. Gina Solomon (UCSF), Dr. Rachel Morello-Frosch (UCB), Dr. Danielle Rivera (UCB)