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Burley, Cowan awarded IE’s 2024 Environmental Justice Graduate Research Scholarships  

October 6, 2024 Burley and Cowan headshots.

This year, the UNC Institute for the Environment awarded two $25,000 Environmental Justice Graduate Research Scholarships to Ph.D. students Katherine Burley (left) and Kristen Cowan (right).   

The scholarships will help fund Burley’s investigation of heat exposure and heat-related health outcomes in marginalized North Carolina communities and Cowan’s dissertation looking at associations between wildfire smoke exposure and poor health outcomes among people who are incarcerated.    

Burley’s two-part project will build on work focusing on heat exposure based out of the Data-Driven EnviroLab (DDL) where she is a research assistant. According to Burley, “heat has been the top cause of weather-related death in the U.S., beyond other weather events that are more typically thought to be dangerous like tornados or hurricanes.”   

Past studies by DDL have demonstrated that disadvantaged communities and marginalized populations are more exposed to heat, including people and communities of color, low-income households and elderly individuals. According to Burley, elderly individuals often have less physical capability for their bodies to regulate in response to heat exposure, and social and economic factors may also affect an individual’s ability to access adequate cooling in their home.  

“As a policy student, I have been really interested in how this information can translate into policy and improve outcomes for people, not just the heat exposure but going beyond to how the heat is affecting them and their health and economic outcomes,” she said.   

The goal of the project is to help local and state governments develop more effective policies and practices to protect people from heat and reduce disparities for disadvantaged and marginalized populations.  

The first phase of the project will focus on defining heat health disparities for North Carolina to help better understand the mechanisms of heat exposure and, in turn, help develop effective solutions. Burley plans to connect Emergency Medical Services (EMS) data on health outcomes of heat-related illness to heat data from DDL and other publicly available sources to identify heat health disparities under different heat events.    

According to Burley, it’s important to think about the different areas and types of populations in which people are experiencing heat.   

“We’re trying to think more specifically about how we can develop solutions that address where these disparities are happening and where the heat health outcomes are happening,” she said.   

For example, if people are experiencing heat at home, this could be an issue with access to air conditioning. Alternatively, if people experience heat in public places, solutions to help with cooling in public spaces may be necessary.   

The second phase addresses data needs of local governments. While heat data is beginning to translate into policy, the process is slow, according to Burley. This phase aims to address this by working with local governments and communities to identify how research can better serve them.   

Burley plans to complete interviews and paired surveys with local governments and communities to gain more information on data needs.   

“Ihave always been really passionate about doing things that matter in my community and my state, and this project is a really exciting opportunity to be able to spend time thinking about an issue that’s important in North Carolina and trying to engage with communities and partners here,” she said.  

Burley has already started the first phase and plans to include the project in her dissertation. 

And she is not alone in looking at the health outcomes of environmental events, Cowan’s dissertation explores the relationship between wildfire smoke exposure and health outcomes among people who are incarcerated in California and Oregon.  

According to Cowan, California and Oregon both have increased wildfire occurrences and an expansive prison system.   

“People who are incarcerated lack agency to relocate when there’s any type of climate-related disaster, and they’re generally not prioritized by preparedness and response plans to evacuate them or relocate them to safer places,” she said.   

This is especially true for wildfires. According to Cowan, people who are serving long amounts of time in prison can have repeated exposure to wildfire smoke due to not being evacuated when there are wildfires.   

“There’s a large prevalence of chronic diseases among people in prison just due to low access to health care,” Cowan added.  

She plans to use data from California and Oregon and detailed wildfire smoke exposure data to see if there are increases in hospitalizations among individuals who are incarcerated in the days following higher levels of wildfire smoke. Cowan will use this data to identify statewide trends and areas that need more preparedness planning for wildfire events.    

“Despite the really high levels of incarceration in the states out west and the crazy amount of days that are high wildfire smoke exposure out there, there isn’t really anything looking at the people who are housed in prisons that are near wildfire events and how that’s affecting them,” Cowan said.  

The project will help bridge gaps in this field of research. Before starting her Ph.D., Cowan worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their National Center for Environmental Health and Emergency Operations Center. She worked on several different disasters, including Hurricane Florence and other infectious disease outbreaks. During her time at the CDC, Cowan noticed a gap in considering people who are incarcerated or have had some interaction with the carceral system when prioritizing public health planning.   

“I think my work prior to coming back to school is informing the way I think about which policies would be able to be impacted by research and framing my research questions to be understandable by decision-makers who work in disaster response,” she said.  

Cowan has already started the project and hopes to present at least her preliminary findings next summer.  

“I’m excited to just get more conversation started about this topic,” Cowan said. “Hopefully when I complete my analyses and am able to publish some of my findings and give presentations on it, people will start thinking about other ways that they can think about this population in their public health research.”  

The award provides an annual stipend to UNC graduate students who can demonstrate a research plan that broadens understanding of environmental justice issues in marginalized communities in North Carolina. The recipient must conduct research using methods that can be modeled for use beyond the state and is encouraged to partner with other disciplines and communities in their project.  

Story by Natalie Peoples
Natalie Peoples is a student at UNC-Chapel Hill. Peoples is currently a senior from Kensington, Maryland, pursuing a double major in journalism and environmental science. In addition to her work as a communications intern for the Institute for the Environment, she has experience in photojournalism and environmental research. Peoples plans to pursue a career in environmental journalism with a special interest in marine science.