No-one else covers climate adaptation like we do.
90+ podcast interviews with adaptation practitioners. Weekly news roundups. In-depth features and opinion articles. Climate Proof is where professionals in the Adaptation Economy go to get smarter, faster.
Editorial planning for next year is underway, and we have big ambitions: more newsletters, better data tools, and up-to-the-minute reporting on the trends that matter.
But these ambitions need funding to be realized. Becoming a Climate Proof member is the best way to support the publication and grow the Adaptation Intelligence platform we’re building. Click below to upgrade and help us towards our 350 members by 2027 goal.
In July 1995, a heatwave in Chicago killed more than 700 people in less than a week. Many of them were elderly, impoverished, and living alone — without access to what could have been life-saving information.
Thirty years later, the city launched a Heat Vulnerability Index that uses hospital and public health records to show which communities are most at risk when temperatures climb, so help can reach them before it’s too late.
Peter Graffy was one of the people who built it.
Peter specializes in building epidemiologic and informatics tools that highlight health risks and their relationship to climate and environmental factors. A pulmonary and critical care postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago — and soon-to-be professor at Oregon Health & Science University — Peter is convinced there is a business case for linking climate and health data at scale. It’s a conviction that led him to co-found Straia Health, which helps employers, health systems, and governments identify the people most exposed to heat and air pollution and decide what to do for them.
In this episode, Peter explains how health data can be leveraged at scale to identify climate and environmental stressors — without compromising privacy — and what interventions can make a difference before disaster strikes.
He also shares findings from his ICU research showing that critically ill patients from more polluted neighborhoods have worse cardiopulmonary outcomes, and introduces Straia’s HeatScope tool — a dynamic risk management app that learns recursively as more data is fed into it.
For those eager to learn more about the climate-health nexus and how data is being used to anticipate risks and recommend life-saving interventions, this is the episode for you.
Listen by clicking the link below, or tune in via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Thanks for listening!
Louie Woodall
Editor
