My environmental health research examines how air pollution and extreme weather are distributed among older adults in New York State, and how those exposures concentrate in communities defined by poverty, race, and living alone. I bring together health, environmental, demographic, and socioeconomic data to identify populations facing a greater accumulation of environmental hazards. In related work on healthcare utilization, I study seasonal and periodic patterns of ischemic heart disease hospitalizations in New York, and I developed a periodic block bootstrap that estimates those patterns with greater precision in noisy health time series.
Related Research
This study quantified the independent and joint effects of flooding and power outages on cardiovascular disease (CVD) hospitalizations in New York State. Using statewide hospitalization and environmental data, I examined how these co-occurring hazards elevate cardiovascular risk across lag periods and identified the populations and circumstances in which that vulnerability is greatest.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-026-00977-1
Data: NYS hospitalization data · Flooding · Power outages · Weather
Methods: Distributed lag nonlinear models (DLNMs) · Quasi-Poisson regression · Threshold analysis · Stratified analysis
Status: Published
Environmental Health Disparities Among Elderly Population in New York State
This study examined whether older adults and vulnerable subgroups are disproportionately located in communities with greater environmental and disaster-related hazards across New York State. Using census county subdivision-level data, we integrated demographic and socioeconomic characteristics with multiple air pollutants, extreme weather events, and FEMA-derived disaster risk to characterize patterns of environmental vulnerability.
