The University of Colorado School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine is a leader in studying the effects of climate change on human health, and Cecilia Sorensen, MD, has put the mileage on her shoes to prove it.
The University of Colorado School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine is a leader in studying the effects of climate change on human health, and Cecilia Sorensen, MD, has put the mileage on her shoes to prove it.
In the past year, she’s surveyed neighborhoods in Puerto Rico to study the aftermath of Hurricane Maria; made daily treks to the Syria-Lebanon border to examine the role of environmental change on women’s health; walked through sugar cane fields in Central America where heat stress may be a culprit behind workers’ increasing rates of kidney disease; and attended numerous conferences and board meetings across the nation.
“The work is so incredible,” she said. “There is so much opportunity for physicians to be involved in this topic.”
Sorensen is the inaugural fellow in the Living Closer Foundation Fellowship in Climate and Health Science Policy, a collaborative post-graduate training program offered through CU Anschutz, National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Medical Society Consortium of Climate and Health.
Read more at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Image: Cecilia Sorensen, MD, right, with a colleague from the Colorado Center for Work, Health and Environment in a sugarcane field in Guatemala. As part of her fellowship, Sorensen studied the health impacts of heat on sugarcane workers. (Credit: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus)
