Held April 8 at the Lois Pope Life Center, the session “Heat, Tropical Cyclones, and Health Risk” brought together researchers and University of Miami experts to examine how extreme weather and environmental conditions affect health and how improved data can inform response.

The event featured presentations by Qinqin Kong, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Health Policy at Stanford University, and Zetianyu Wang, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California Center for Economic and Social Research.

Panelists included Amy Clement, Ph.D., professor in the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science; James Shultz, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences; and Jennifer Posner, director of programs at the University of Miami Climate Resilience Institute. Together, they brought expertise in climate dynamics, climate change adaptation in South Florida, public health emergency preparedness and the intersection of climate resilience and urban planning.

Lin Zhu, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences and co-director of the roundtables series, opened the session by outlining the vision for the new series.

“The roundtables series was created to foster interdisciplinary dialogue around pressing public health issues,” Zhu said. “Rather than traditional grand rounds, these sessions are designed to bring together diverse perspectives, encourage discussion and connect research with real-world impact.”

Farren Briggs, Ph.D., Sc.M., associate professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences and co-director of the series, led the panel discussion, guiding conversation on how the research translates to real-world challenges in South Florida and beyond.

Measuring Risk More Precisely

Dr. Wang presented research on the effects of tropical cyclones and flooding on infant mortality in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on Bangladesh and other highly exposed settings.

His analysis captured both direct and indirect health impacts, including deaths linked to disrupted health services and other downstream effects often excluded from official counts.

“Governments and humanitarian organizations generally only assess and report the direct impact of disasters,” Dr. Wang said. “But the indirect impact might be much more serious and profound.”

Using geospatial datasets, Dr. Wang found that exposure to tropical cyclones in utero or during the first year of life was associated with an 11% increase in infant mortality across seven countries. In Bangladesh, he estimated more than 140,000 excess infant deaths linked to in utero flood exposure over two decades.

Rethinking How Heat Stress Is Measured

Dr. Kong examined how heat stress is measured, with a focus on the role of humidity relative to temperature.

While temperature is often the most visible indicator of dangerous heat, Dr. Kong explained that humidity can dramatically affect how the body experiences and responds to heat by reducing the effectiveness of sweat evaporation.

“The key question is, how much does humidity matter relative to temperature?” he said.

Dr. Kong’s analysis, based on heat stroke data in Japan, found that commonly used heat indices may overemphasize humidity and overlook the importance of radiation in predicting health risk.

Different measurement approaches can identify different conditions as dangerous, shaping heat warnings, projections and decisions related to cooling and infrastructure.

A South Florida Context

During the discussion, panelists connected the research to South Florida, where heat is a persistent condition influenced by infrastructure, housing, transportation and energy access.

Posner emphasized the need for more detailed, community-informed data to guide policy, particularly for populations most affected by extreme heat, including outdoor workers, transit users and households facing high energy costs.

Dr. Clement described research showing that official weather station data often fail to capture the level of heat exposure people actually experience in neighborhoods across Miami-Dade County.

“The picture that we have, with very sparse data at certain points that aren’t representative of where people are living, completely misses the hazard in the community,” Dr. Clement said.

She also noted that heat in South Florida does not fit neatly into a short-term disaster framework. Unlike a discrete heat wave in other regions, dangerous heat here can persist for months, affecting quality of life, energy costs and chronic stress on the body even when it does not appear directly on a death certificate.

Dr. Shultz expanded on that point from a disaster public health perspective, noting that heat-related mortality often exceeds that of other disaster types, while still remaining harder to classify and communicate.

“In terms of extreme weather events, mortality is much higher for heat than any other disaster,” said Dr. Shultz.

He also pointed to compounded risks when extreme heat intersects with power outages, hurricanes and medical vulnerability.

A New Forum for Public Health Dialogue

The inaugural session brought together interdisciplinary perspectives on climate-related health challenges and highlighted the role of data in understanding and responding to emerging risks.

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Written by Deycha Torres Hernández, published April 15, 2026.