Duke University and the Duke-NUS Medical School have awarded a multi-institutional, two-year, $200,000 research collaboration pilot project grant to multi-PIs, Dr. Vijay Krishnamoorthy of Duke Anesthesiology and Dr. Marcus Ong of Duke-NUS for their project, “Impact of Wildfire Smoke and Heat on Acute Cardiopulmonary Outcomes in Southeast Asia.”
Climate change represents a significant global health challenge of the 21st century. It is altering environmental conditions, increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as heat waves and wildfires. These changes have direct and devastating effects on human health, necessitating urgent action and robust policy responses. High-resolution data that elucidates the health benefits of climate action is essential, serving as a critical foundation for international climate change mitigation strategies.
The research will be conducted by a multi-national team from the Duke University School of Medicine, the Nicholas School of the Environment, and the Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. Leveraging an already established collaboration, investigators will analyze data from the following environmental and clinical databases: the Pan Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study (PAROS) and the SingHealth Duke NUS GSK COPD and Asthma Real World Evidence (SDG CARE) database.
This project aims to assess and forecast the health implications of extreme heat and wildfire smoke exposure in diverse climatic and demographic contexts in Singapore and other Asian regions such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. It will utilize data from models that predict future warming scenarios and link detailed climate data with high-resolution health outcomes data to analyze cardiopulmonary health outcomes, particularly in vulnerable patient populations, across Southeast Asia and inform future climate change mitigation strategies.
“I am very excited to work with an incredibly talented team at Duke and Duke-NUS to improve our understanding of the interplay of climate change and acute health outcomes,” says Krishnamoorthy, associate professor of anesthesiology. “I believe that this project will not only help to push the field forward, but also help strengthen global collaborations to fuel future work in this area.”
Duke members involved in the grant include Drs. Fintan Hughes, Karthik Raghunathan and Tetsu Ohnuma of Duke Anesthesiology, Dr. Drew Shindell of Duke Earth and Climate Sciences, Dr. Prasad Kasibhatla of Duke Environmental Sciences and Policy, and Dr. Brooke Alhanti of Duke Biostatistics & Bioinformatics.
Duke Anesthesiology faculty affiliated with Duke-NUS Medical School include Dr. Michael "Luke" James, who serves as the associate dean at Duke-NUS, and Dr. Wei Yang, who is a collaborating principal investigator at Duke-NUS.