Joan Casey

More than 100,000 oil and gas wells across the western US are in areas burned by wildfires in recent decades, according to a new study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the UW and six other institutions. Some 3 million people live next to wells that in the future could be in the path of fires worsened by climate change. 

Researchers using a novel method of measuring long-term wildfire smoke exposure have found that Indigenous communities in California are exposed to disproportionate amounts of dangerous particulate matter—sometimes far beyond what has been previously known.

2023 has been a year of community resilience for the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS). Together with many partners, our students, faculty and staff spearheaded projects to help Pacific Northwest communities respond and adapt to extreme heat, flooding, wildfire smoke and other impacts of climate change.

DEOHS is collaborating with cross-sector partners to prepare for a hotter future in the Pacific Northwest

Heat is a quiet killer. Unlike most natural disasters, which can leave visible damage across an entire region, a heat wave’s effects on human health can be difficult to track.

Joan A. Casey received her doctoral degree from the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2014. Dr. Casey is an environmental epidemiologist who focuses on environmental health, environmental justice, and sustainability.