Director: Dr. David Abramson
Director of Research: Dr. Alexis Merdjanoff
The Center for Public Health Disaster Science is one of only 25 such academic centers in the country, focused in particular on the public health impacts of disasters, extreme events, and climate threats. The Center applies social science and public health theory and methods to the complex challenges posed to community and individual health and well-being by natural, man-made, biological, and technological hazards and disasters, in an effort to identify generalizable principles. The Center maintains a broad research portfolio of studies funded by NIH (Katrina longitudinal research; a California wildfire study), NSF (risk communication during Zika; the role of belief systems, trust in authority, and information-seeking during COVID), the CDC (co-directing the Public Health Extreme Events Research network – PHEER), and foundations and philanthropies. Several faculty labs are embedded in the Center, including Dr. Abramson’s Population Impact, Recovery and Resilience (PiR 2 ) Lab, which serves as the vehicle for students to participate in the Center’s current research, and connects students with the deep data archives, and Dr. Merdjanoff’s Climate Justice and Health Lab, in which lab members employ both quantitative and qualitative methods and develop the skills needed to form a holistic approach to understanding the health impacts of climate change and disasters.