PIPages
Labs

Arnab Ghosh

Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career

Hurricanes and heat waves are becoming more frequent as the climate warms, and they do not harm everyone equally. Older adults, people with chronic illnesses and people in poorer neighborhoods often face the greatest risks.

Fields

Public Health & Epidemiology

Medicine & Clinical Research

Mathematics & Statistics

Topics

climate change and health

extreme weather events

extreme heat

Grants
2 known grants, through Jun 2028

What they work on

  1. Test whether extreme heat events raise county-level COVID-19 risk nationwide, combining Johns Hopkins case data, census data and National Weather Service records from 2020–2022 in spatiotemporal models with quasi-experimental designs.
  2. Identify which personal, clinical and neighborhood traits raise the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization after extreme heat events, using patient-level data from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C).
  3. Estimate Hurricane Sandy's effect on cardiovascular disease among New York City adults aged 65 and older for up to five years after landfall, using Medicare claims and census tract-level spatiotemporal modeling.
  4. Compare heart attack, stroke and heart failure rates after Hurricane Sandy in people the federal emPOWER program flags as high risk versus other Medicare beneficiaries, using survival analysis and Cox models.
  5. Develop and internally validate a machine-learning tool that predicts which Medicare beneficiaries face high cardiovascular risk after a hurricane, to improve federal disaster planning.

More about the research

These two projects ask how extreme weather affects health over time and in specific places, and how to identify the people at highest risk before disaster strikes. Both rely on large health and environmental datasets and on statistical models that track disease across space and time.

Why it matters

Older adults, people with chronic illness and low-income communities face the greatest health risks from hurricanes and heat waves. This work could help public health agencies and the federal emPOWER program find these people before a disaster, for example to plan evacuations and follow-up care. It could also guide tailored warnings and interventions for those vulnerable to both COVID-19 and extreme heat. A validated risk tool could help prevent heart attacks, strokes and heart failure after hurricanes.

Known grants

From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.

Understanding the long-term effects of hurricanes on cardiovascular health and outcomes

NIH · Jul 2023 – Jun 2028

The Interaction of Public Health Emergencies: Understanding Nation-wide and City-wide Spatiotemporal Dynamics of COVID-19 Transmission in a Warming World

NIH · Mar 2024 – Feb 2027

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Estimate effects of the first year of Medicare Part D opioid safety edits, before the 2020 public health emergency, on non-elderly beneficiaries prescribed long-term, high-dose opioid therapy, using 2017-22 Medicare claims and quasi-experimental designs.

The school

Weill Medical College of Cornell University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 59 research doctorates a year.

More about Weill Medical College of Cornell University

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