Dr. Maureen Lichtveld poses for a photo inside of the School of Public Health on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus in Oakland on Aug. 7, 2024. (Photo by Jess Daninhirsch/PublicSource)
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COVID-19 and the climate crisis may seem like unlikely bedfellows. But Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health, makes the case that they are interconnected in a variety of ways that put pressure on the public health systems of communities around Pennsylvania. Fracking and deforestation in the state contribute to the climate crisis and increase the risk of diseases transmitted from animals to humans, like COVID-19. We discussed this intersection and potential solutions.
The conversation was edited for brevity and clarity.
Can you share a bit about your work and what brought you to Pittsburgh?
I’m here because there is so much that we need to do, not only locally, regionally, nationally, but internationally, because of the public health threats we are facing. From the traditional environmental health issues to now, increasingly, pandemics and climate and health. I see myself as a leader to make sure that the next generation of public health workforce can address these challenges in the most comprehensive of fashions — working very closely with communities in general and particularly those communities who are most vulnerable.
In our school, we have veterinarians, physicians, health services providers and behavioral scientists. We also have people who are geneticists, and so to be able to address a complex problem originating from interconnected threats you have to have interconnectedness of science, skills and of knowledge. That’s where and how we want to create the next generation — that they come out not knowing a lot about a little but they know a lot about a lot.
You are a public health educator and leader, but also involved in several climate change initiatives. What’s the connection?
The interconnectedness between human health, animal health, environment and plant health with climate change is currently the No. 1 public health threat. We know how to deal with pandemics. But flooding, heat … all of our communities, including right here in Pittsburgh, are suffering from heat. Now, how do we address heat? Many people don’t have air conditioning in their homes. How do we address heat in cities where there might not be cooling centers or cooling centers are not where people need them most? How do we address heat for people who are homeless? In nursing homes where some rooms may not have the correct air conditioning system? I couldn’t think of a more challenging health problem than climate change.
If enough of us are vaccinated and are boosted, then we can protect the other 4% who are not. But currently, our numbers are in the 60-70% range, and so we don’t have that extra protection.
Dr. Maureen Lichtveld
In particular, how are COVID and climate change connected?
While we know in general how viruses behave, when there is a new virus or a new family member in that virus, we need to make sure that we put those things in place that really help us control the pandemic. So the definition of a pandemic is threefold:
1. The presence of a new virus or virus variant humans have not encountered yet.
2. The infection results in severe illness including deaths. In this case, COVID-19 has led to millions of deaths.
3. It is easily transmissible from human to human. This is often aided by animal intermediate hosts, like bird, pig and most recently, cow.
We checked all those boxes in the case of COVID-19. And right now, we have another increase in COVID cases. Why is that? We are not listening enough to what our public health consensus is teaching us. Some of us are not getting the booster in time and some of us are no longer masking. These are fundamental public health protection measures that we don’t pay attention to. It is time again to reinforce as to why public health should be the lead in addressing pandemics.
Now, the climate also impacts each of these three threats:
1. Prolonged and more severe periods of floods, heat, drought are creating the opportunity for new virus variants to come into close proximity with normal human habitats.
2. The severity of disease and the high mortality is especially pronounced in vulnerable subpopulations suffering extreme heat, such as people without air-conditioned homes and the homeless.
3. The anti-science campaign still surrounding climate change has exacerbated the anti-vaccine movement, resulting in vaccine coverage far below what is needed to create herd immunity (about 95%), resulting in accelerated easy human-to-human transmission. We can see how these issues are inextricably connected.
As of spring 2023, Pennsylvania reported more than 3.5 million confirmed cases of COVID and 51,344 deaths from the virus since the outbreak in 2020. We don’t have data beyond that due to the ending of the public health emergency. As the virus surges again, what do you want people to understand about COVID?
If enough of us are vaccinated and are boosted, then we can protect the other 4% who are not. But currently, our numbers are in the 60-70% range, and so we don’t have that extra protection. Currently, there are many locations like pharmacies and doctor’s clinics where you can go to be boosted. In a couple weeks, schools will resume, and we’ll have a surge of new people with or without some virus exposure among us. If we don’t use and implement those protective measures, we will face an epidemic, and if it crosses the world, again a pandemic. It’s not that we don’t know what to do. It’s that we don’t do it.
We’ve dealt with COVID on top of existing respiratory problems related to air quality. Allentown, Philadelphia and Harrisburg are among the nation’s asthma capitals, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Industrial pollution and fracking are seen as drivers of asthma. Add to that COVID and climate change. How would you characterize the stakes for Pennsylvania?
We are not only having double whammies, but triple and sometimes quadruple whammies. If you are living in an environment where air pollution is high, and if your home is older or deteriorated, you could have mold. Perhaps on top of that you have pets. All of these things impact air quality. Then, if you are living in a neighborhood where access to care is difficult and you have a child with asthma or an adult with any lung-related condition, and now there is this coronavirus that you haven’t seen and your body hasn’t seen before or you’re vaccinated and maybe you lagged on your booster for more than a year — you are creating a storm that is impacting your health and your lung health.
It’s not just individual health, it is the community’s health. The way to address this is through a transdisciplinary fashion. For example, one of the areas we’ve been active in with COVID is uploading data science to predict where the most vulnerable populations live and where to position the vaccine to help us address that.
If you put a virus on top of [climate change and increased air pollution], you can see how the lung is having to deal with two threats at a time.
We know that both COVID-19 and the climate crisis disproportionately impact Black and brown communities, low-income communities and other marginalized groups. And the number of financially struggling households is rising. Are there particular measures public health officials and community leaders should be taking to support the most vulnerable families as COVID and climate change converge?
We have learned a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, we collectively learned that we can’t wait for patients who are exposed to come to us. We need to go to them. So the notion about mobile clinics and telemedicine, bringing vaccinations to the people, rather than waiting, should not be an exception but instead the first action we take. And the very first action is to focus the efforts on those who are most vulnerable.
Considering the possibility that climate change brings more frequent pandemics involving airborne pathogens, are there specific air quality measures we should be taking to address this?
Climate change is exacerbating air pollution. And when air pollution increases, and the temperature is hotter and the wind direction changes, we have two things that happen: We have a different composition of greenhouse gasses, and we have different tiny particles that you swallow, and they go into your lungs and worsen asthma, for instance. So you are attacking the regular function of the lung. If you put a virus on top of that, you can see how the lung is having to deal with two threats at a time. And so the interconnectedness between air pollution and the COVID pandemic was so clear to see for people who already live in a neighborhood with bad air quality, and it’s already stretching [environmental] laws.
The 2021 Pennsylvania Climate Impacts Assessment projects that by the middle of the century, the state will be another 5.9 F hotter on average, with more days over 100 F, and average rainfall up roughly another 10% — beyond the 10% increase we’ve already seen since 1901. Does that change the pandemic risk profile of the state? If so, why and how?
It definitely does. It increases not additively — so not one plus one is two — but synergistically, so one plus one could be 10. So, if we have increased air pollution, and we have warmer temperatures, then together those impact our overall health and wellbeing. Imagine if it is too hot and you can’t go outside. So, you’re inside and your home is not air conditioned. What if one of the members in your household is isolated because of the COVID virus? So you can see how one builds on each other and influences each other. The ultimate result is that you will become in poorer health much quicker as opposed to handling one of those issues at a time.
For us, one of our focus areas is precision public health: This means we predict using data. Where will we have the worst problems? Where will we have people who are the most vulnerable so that we can prepare?
An example: We have a grant from the National Institutes of Health that let us address the potential impact from the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment. We are looking at early signs of damage to the liver due to exposure of vinyl chloride, which was spilled during the train derailment. Vinyl chloride can cause cancer. We could wait — or look at early signs and monitor so we can intervene quickly and early.
You’ve explained about this transdisciplinary approach that’s needed. And you’re not alone in that view and effort. Please share about the One Health initiative.
We are very honored and humbled to be the coordinating center for the Pennsylvania One Health Consortium where we are bringing together academic institutions, state health agencies and other community organizations. We are ready to provide science, so that policy can be created based on science.
What is One Health? We often think of health as human health, but we forget how much animal health impacts humans. We are currently dealing with the H5N1 situation in cows. While cow milk, after you boil it and pasteurize it, is fine to drink, we need to pay attention to that.
Then, there is plant health. If we have to use more pesticides on vegetables to put on the market, that impacts our health, doesn’t it? Everything is connected to the ecosystem and the environment. So if the environment is sick, we will be sick, too. Unfortunately, we are doing it to the environment. It’s not some alien force. Most of climate change is caused by human behavior and human action. Again, we know what to do, we just need to do it.
Natalie Bencivenga is a socially conscious journalist, KDKA radio host and media consultant. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or TikTok. Visit her website.
This story was fact-checked by Briana Bindus.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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