Faculty
Satchit Balsari md mph
Fellowship Director
Department of Emergency Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Associate Professor, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Balsari lab (balsarilab.com) is committed to closing information asymmetries in vulnerable communities around the world, through research, training and advocacy. Applying novel data streams, and digital health tools, Balsari’s research has resulted in a range of public health innovations that include cloud-based syndromic surveillance systems deployed at the world’s largest mass gatherings, decision-support tools deployed at over 50 recent global disasters (crisisready.io/readymapper), and LLM-powered hyper-contextualized decision support tools for clinicians in the global south. He is currently lead investigator of the Community Heat Adaptation and Treatment Strategies project at Harvard’s Salata and Mittal Institutes, that maps the impact of heat on the health and wages of 1000 poor women workers most vulnerable to climate change. He has taught extensively at Cornell and Harvard on digital health, social entrepreneurship, and disasters.
caleb dresser md mph
Assistant Fellowship Director
Department of Emergency Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Instructor, Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr Dresser is a practicing emergency physician whose research focuses on understanding how climate change is affecting healthcare organizations and the patients they serve, and developing solutions to address these impacts. In addition to his work with our Fellows, Dr Dresser serves as Director of Healthcare Solutions at Harvard Chan C-CHANGE, where his work includes evaluation and refinement of toolkits for patients, administrators, and clinicians, a pilot assessment of the use of targeted heatwave alerts for clinic staff, and adaptation of these resources to new settings. He teaches a Harvard course on Human Health and Global Environmental Change for medical and graduate students and has lectured widely on the implications of climate change for health, healthcare, and societal preparedness.
tess wiskel md mph
Department of Emergency Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Instructor, Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Tess Wiskel is an emergency medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and a graduate of the Climate and Human Health Fellowship with a Master of Public Health from Harvard. She has centered her career on improving care for at risk populations, both locally and globally. During medical school and residency, she conducted research, education and advocacy focusing on global and women’s health, including developing an accident and emergency HIV testing program in Belize and an educational elective in reproductive health in emergency care. She is now a Burke Research Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute.
Staff
Ashley Smith
Program Coordinator
Ashley is a graduate of UMass Boston with a background in communications, marketing, and events. She joins the fellowship as a Program Coordinator after her time as a Communications Intern at UMass Boston's Sustainable Solutions Lab.
Fellows
Catharina Giudice, MD
Fellow (2023 - 2025)
Catharina is an Emergency Physician who joined the fellowship after completing her residency in Emergency Medicine at Los Angeles County & University of Southern California Residency and medical school at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She has helped develop a climate change elective curriculum for EM residents worldwide, contributed to a literature review article aimed at improving heat stroke management in the ED, and spearheaded multiple publications on managing pathologies affected by climate change
Noah Rosenberg
Infectious Diseases Fellow (2024 - 2026); Climate Change and Infectious Diseases Track
Noah attended medical school at NYU before joining BIDMC for residency and chief residency. His research interests are at the intersection of infectious disease and climate change, studying extreme heat effects on readmission, and is excited to be pursuing the Climate Change and Infectious Diseases Track within the fellowship program to further study its effect on vector-borne, water-borne, and zoonotic diseases.
Fellowship Alumni
Latoya Storr, MBBS
Fellow (2023 - 2024)
Dr. Latoya E. Storr, MBBS, is an Emergency Medicine Specialist and Consultant Physician in the Accident & Emergency Department at the Rand Memorial Hospital on the island of Grand Bahama in the Bahamas. Dr. Storr completed her medical school and residency training at the University of the West Indies and is an Associate Lecturer for the Emergency Medicine program at the University of the West Indies School of Clinical Medicine & Research in the Bahamas.
Tess Wiskel, MD
Fellow (2022 - 2024)
Tess is an Emergency Physician and a graduate of the Brown University Emergency Medicine Residency Program and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. She has centered her career on improving care for at risk populations, both locally and globally. During medical school and residency, she conducted research, education and advocacy focusing on global and women’s health, including developing an accident and emergency HIV testing program in Belize and an educational elective in reproductive health in emergency care.
Kimberly Humphrey, MBBS, MPH&TM
Fellow (2022 - 2023)
Kimberly is an Emergency Physician and Public Health Medical Consultant for the South Australian Government, leading work in climate change and health focused on mitigation and adaptation for South Australia’s health systems. She is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide and is Chair of the South Australia Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) Committee and Deputy Chair of the DEA National Board.
Caleb Dresser, MD, MPH
Fellow (2019 - 2021)
Caleb was the 2019-2021 Fellow in Climate and Human Health and the inaugural fellow in the program. During fellowship, Caleb’s academic work focused on understanding and communicating the health impacts of climate change, including potential impacts on human migration and climate-related mobility, heat-related illness, hurricanes, wildfires, and electrical outages.
Graduate Student Affiliates
Neil Singh Bedi
Medical School Research Externship and MPH Practicum, 2024-2025
Boston University School of Medicine / Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Neil Singh is working with our team to study the operational implications of climate-responsive hazards using medical records and geospatial data sets. His past work has included analyzing the exposure of hospitals to wildfires in California and analyzing the implications of climate change for healthcare in urban settings.
Zilin Lu MPH
MPH Applied Learning Experience, 2023-2024
Tufts University School of Public Health
Zilin worked with our team to assemble data on Emergency Department utilization and align it with local weather data from the National Weather Service. Her research helped identify relationships between heat and operationally relevant ED metrics.
Athanasios Burtolos MD MPH
MPH Practicum, 2022-2023
Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Athanasios worked with our team to analyze the relationship between local weather conditions and Emergency Department daily arrival volume at our medical center. His research, which included integration of rolling averages into a multivariable model and the use of training and test sets to assess model performance, was selected for the Master Scholar session at SAEM 2023, and is currently under review for publication.
Emma Webb PAC MPH
MPH Applied Learning Experience, 2020-2021
Tufts University School of Public Health
Emma worked with our team to study the exposure of patients who use electricity-dependent medical equipment to a locally relevant Cliamte-responsive hazard, specifically storm surge flooding from hurricanes. Her research showed that a substantial number of patients who use home nebulizers live in areas at risk of flooding during future hurricanes and was published in the Rhode Island Medical Journal.