2024 Schedule

Environmental stressors are a more potent influence on human health than genetic predisposition, a finding that has galvanized the emerging, interdisciplinary field of exposomics. Satellite technology, machine learning, and AI models are allowing experts at Mount Sinai’s Institute for Climate Change, Environmental Health, and Exposomics to reshape our understanding of what happens to the human bod...

Extreme heat waves, storms, and wildfires; disease outbreaks, water shortages, and crop loss; tick-borne illnesses and asthma—these are just some visible signs of a changing climate. Few physicians have been trained to recognize the potent health consequences—allergies that are no longer just seasonal, athletes suddenly finding it hard to breathe, patients who can’t get needed care when travel bec...

Climate change, with its global threats to health, could destroy low-lying nations and push as many as 135 million people into poverty by 2030, according to the World Bank. But these catastrophic consequences are not inevitable. Acknowledging that the burdens of climate change have been distributed inequitably, and targeting aggressive action specifically to vulnerable populations, could mitigate...

Human beings sometimes forget they are animals themselves. The biological and emotional patterns of other mammals—seen in cancer among golden retrievers, high blood pressure in pregnant giraffes, the social behavior of insects, and connections among elephants that safeguard against loneliness—have much to teach us about our own health. The emerging field of zoobiquity, which joins evolutionary bio...

Nature does not limit its influence only to rural populations. In cities around the world, dense living conditions, lack of green spaces, substandard housing, and poor sanitation allow rats and insects to proliferate and pollution to degrade health. But if certain urban characteristics help spread disease, others can curb it, including strategically placed trees, adaptable health systems, and a pu...

Climate change is a threat multiplier with a disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations. Girls and women, who are denied equitable access to education and economic opportunity in many parts of the world, are most likely to experience the far-reaching effects of a warming planet. Advocates are trying to level the playing field with projects designed to empower the female half of the populati...