Carina Gronlund
University of Michigan, MI·Public Health & Epidemiology
Millions of older Americans live in homes that do not protect them from extreme heat or cold. Often the cause is energy poverty, when households cannot afford to heat or cool their homes.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Earth & Environmental Science
Social Science
- Topics
weatherization
energy poverty
energy efficiency
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Measure how indoor temperature relates to cognitive function and sleep quality and duration in older adults, using actigraphy sleep sensors, surveys and sub-hourly indoor monitoring over a year.
- Compare how low-cost and high-cost weatherization programs in Detroit, Madison and Memphis change indoor temperature, humidity and residents' financial worry.
- Estimate the dollar value of weatherization's health impacts, including community-wide air pollution benefits from reduced energy use and health benefits to residents.
More about the research
Indoor temperature may affect sleep and short-term thinking, and high utility bills can cause money worry. This project asks whether weatherization, home upgrades that improve energy efficiency, can improve older adults' health and finances.
Why it matters
Older adults in energy-poor homes may face health harm from extreme temperatures and money stress. Dollar estimates of weatherization's health benefits could guide energy efficiency and subsidy policy. Medical savings might offset public healthcare costs while helping households cut energy use and cope with extreme weather.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alex Nading
Cornell University, NY·Social Science
Analyze how households in the US, Ghana, India, Singapore and the UK use energy to heat and cool their homes, using comparative qualitative methods that attend to kinship, gendered labor and local architectural practices.
Meredith McCormack
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine how bedroom air quality, allergens such as mouse allergen, and microbes such as Staphylococcus aureus relate to objectively measured sleep quality in low-income children with asthma in Baltimore City.
Kathryn Conlon
University of California-Davis, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether lifetime exposure to extreme weather events (extreme heat, drought, wildfire) is linked to brain imaging markers, cognitive decline, and dementia, using geocoded residential histories of 3,379 diverse Northern California older adults.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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