Building on our existing expertise and new recruits, we have started a team with various disciplinary backgrounds to work closely in this area.
Leadership
Zhen Cong, Ph.D. is a Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Director of the Climate and Health Initiative at the UAB School of Public Health. Her research interests include climate and health, social and health disparities related to disasters, especially older adults’ vulnerability and resilience to disasters; disaster preparedness, access and response to warnings, mitigation, recovery process associated with disasters, decision making and intergenerational relationships. Dr. Cong has led multiple interdisciplinary teams and has conducted a series of research projects including longitudinal data collection, data integration and multilevel and system analysis related to hurricanes and tornadoes to address critical problems such as access and response to warnings, mitigation, disparities in health consequences and the recovery process associated with disasters as well as support decision making by stakeholders. She is an inaugural member of the NIH’s Climate and Health Scholars Program and a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. She serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Associate Editor of Statistics for Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Marriage and Family and the Journal of Research on Aging.
Jeffrey K. Wickliffe, Ph.D., is a Professor and current Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the UAB School of Public Health. He is also the Co-Director of the Climate and Health Initiative at UAB. His research interests include the impacts of climate on human and environmental health. Specifically, he is interested in how climate and changes in climate and weather influence environmental factors that in turn affect health, such as air and water pollution. He is also interested in how climate-driven factors such as heat and drought can impact health, both physical health and mental health, as well as affect environmental media, including surface and groundwater quality. He is also interested in how climate-related disaster events increase exposure to a variety of chemical, physical and biological environmental health hazards. His research has been funded by numerous federal and non-federal sources such as the NIH, NSF, foundations and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
Steering Committee
Azar Abadi, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the UAB School of Public Health. Dr. Abadi is cross-trained in climatology/meteorology and environmental epidemiology. Her research interest focuses on first exploring and better understanding the role of climate and natural environment on public health and second, on investigating how these impacts vary by demographic characteristics and Social Determinants of Health indicators. Her current projects involve the use of statistical modeling, data management and machine learning techniques to improve our understanding of how environmental exposure, such as drought and heat waves, is affecting the communities. The proper early warning messaging systems should be backed up by robust scientific research. The ultimate goal of her research is to help improve the allocation of public resources and public health messaging systems to minimize adverse health outcomes driven by climate and weather-related events. Dr. Abadi actively collaborates on multiple federally funded large observational studies to better understand the impacts of drought on health outcomes.
Pamela Jackson, Ph.D., RN, MLT(ASCP)BB is a nurse scientist whose research focuses on the influence of neighborhood-level environmental exposures on the pace of biological aging. Dr. Jackson is particularly interested in the adverse health impacts of climate change on socioeconomically vulnerable communities and using community-engaged approaches to examine the intersection of climate and health. She has an extensive 20+ year history working in healthcare systems in the broader metropolitan area and grew up in local, socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods – bringing inherent ties and shared perspective with the local community’s environmental concerns. Her past work examined the relationship between neighborhood deprivation/disadvantage and epigenetic age acceleration. Additional ongoing projects explore climate distress, disparities in ambient heat exposure and the relationship between environmental injustice and epigenetic age acceleration. Dr. Jackson was selected as a member of the 2023 cohort of the NIH/NIEHS Environmental Health Research Institute for Nurse and Clinician Scientists. Her work has resulted in multiple peer-reviewed publications; local, state, and national conference presentations; and grant funding from NIH/NIA.
Paul Campbell Erwin, M.D., DrPH is Dean of the UAB School of Public Health and Professor in Health Policy and Organization. Dr. Erwin earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of the South (Sewanee), his medical degree from the UAB School of Medicine, a master’s in public health from John Hopkins University and a doctorate in public health from the University of North Carolina. He is certified in internal medicine, public health and preventive medicine, and a leader in establishing formal Academic Health Department collaboratives with public health practice partners. Prior to becoming dean in 2018, Dr. Erwin was the Department Head for Public Health at the University of Tennessee, where he served for 11 years. Before joining academia, he was director of the East Tennessee Regional Health Office for the Tennessee Department of Health, overseeing 15 county health departments, mostly in rural Appalachia. He is an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health and a member of the editorial boards for Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba Review and the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice.
Meredith Gartin, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Global Health in the Department of Health Policy and Organization at the UAB School of Public Health. Dr. Gartin also holds a position as the Board President for the Alabama Interfaith Refugee Partnership, a non-profit 501(c)(3) based here in Birmingham. Dr. Gartin’s main area of expertise focuses on global environmental health and urbanization, with a particular focus on migration and on vulnerabilities related to food and water. Dr. Gartin is especially interested in how global and local processes of climate change converge on human health and development issues,. For over 10 years, Dr. Gartin has conducted cross-cultural, climate-related health research in Central and South America, the South Pacific, and the US.
Given her focus on general global health education and training, Dr. Gartin consults and evaluates the global health curriculum and programming in institutions of higher education. As the co-chair of the Sub-Committee on Master’s and Undergraduate Degrees in Global Health with the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, Education Committee, Dr. Gartin and fellow colleagues have published a series of peer-reviewed journal articles mapping global health programs in US institutions with CEPH and ASPPH competencies. She also leads and directs global health curriculum at UAB as well.
Affiliate Members
Mark Banaszak Holl, Ph.D. is Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and Associate Dean for Research in the School of Engineering at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He also has an appointment in the Division of Pulmonology, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine in the Heersink School of Medicine. His research interests focus of pulmonary drug delivery for asthma and COPD, environmental effects on health care outcomes, and how engineering can best enable and guarantee equal opportunity to all individuals. Dr. Banaszak Holl has led and participated in many interdisciplinary teams, often with industrial participation, aimed at improving individual and community health and has international experience in Australia, China, and Malaysia. He is part of the Research Coordination Network “Building cross-disciplinary capacity to understand complex dynamics of climatic processes, bioaerosols, and infectious pathogens for a resilient human health response” funded by the Climate Impact on Human Health program at the National Science Foundation
Bambi Ingram, ISSP SA, LEED GA is Manager of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Sustainability Program and Program Director for UAB’s Solar House and Microgrid Demonstration Community. Bambi is an International Society for Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) Certified Sustainability Professional and a LEED Green Associate. As Sustainability Manager for the University of Alabama at Birmingham—an urban campus of more than 200 classroom, office, research, and hospital buildings comprising one-hundred city blocks—Bambi works to advance campus and community projects and policies in renewable energy, waste diversion, transportation, and other sustainability challenges.
Prior to her work at UAB, Bambi served as the Director for Corporate and Foundation Relations at Birmingham-Southern College and the Southern Environmental Center. Over the course of her career, she has procured and managed more than $20 million in federal, state, corporate and foundation funds in support of higher education, arts, and environmental and renewable energy programs.
Bambi currently serves on the board of directors for Energy Alabama. Previously she served on boards for the Alabama Environmental Council, Birmingham Artwalk and the Homewood Arts Commission. Bambi holds a bachelor’s degree in art from California State University, Long Beach.
Dustin Kemp, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the UAB College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Kemp is a native of Missouri, but during high school, had the opportunity to travel to Australia and dive on the Great Barrier Reef. He was fascinated by the abundance of animals and the complex interactions occurring and continued to develop a strong interest in marine biology during undergraduate work at Texas A&M University at Galveston. This determined his interest in a career studying marine ecosystems.
During graduate work at Florida Atlantic University and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Dr. Kemp began working with invertebrate symbiotic relationships. This research further developed during his doctoral and post-doctoral work at the University of Georgia and Penn State University where he studied coral physiology, microbial diversity of prokaryotes and eukaryotes associated with corals and the effects of climate change on coral reef ecosystems. He has worked on coral reefs throughout the Caribbean and Pacific and continues to study ecology, physiology and evolution of these important ecosystems. Dr. Kemp’s research interests include marine invertebrate physiology and ecology during environmental perturbation, carbon and nutrient transfer in marine organisms and diversity and function of microbial symbionts.
David Kimberlin, M.D. holds the Sergio Stagno Endowed Chair in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he is Vice Chair for Clinical and Translational Research and Co-Director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases in the UAB Heersink School of Medicine. Dr. Kimberlin also is the Principal Investigator for the Collaborative Antiviral Study Group (CASG). Funded continuously by NIH/NIAID/DMID since the early 1970s, the CASG is a network of pediatric academic medical centers that evaluates antiviral therapeutics in rare diseases with a large unmet medical need, including neonatal herpes simplex virus (HSV) infections, congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease, congenital Zika syndrome, neonatal and infantile influenza infection, and neonatal enteroviral sepsis syndrome. Current studies are evaluating novel treatment approaches for neonatal HSV, new antiviral drugs for congenital CMV, longterm benefit of antiviral therapy in congenital CMV, and natural history studies of acute flaccid myelitis and neonatal enteroviral sepsis. These studies build upon previous CASG studies conducted by Dr. Kimberlin that have defined the standard of care for the treatment of neonatal HSV and congenital CMV infections.
Dr. Kimberlin is also Editor of the 2021 AAP Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases (Red Book), an Associate Editor for the 6th edition of Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and a Past-President of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS). In 2016, he received the Ronald McDonald House Charities 2016 Medical Award of Excellence in addition to numerous education awards.
Jason T. Kirby, Ph.D. is the UAB Director of the Sustainable Smart Cities master’s degree program. He is a full-time Associate Professor in the UAB Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, specializing in Environmental Engineering education and serves as a faculty fellow in the UAB Honors Program (Sci-tech) .
Kirby is primarily concerned with advancing knowledge of the dangers and opportunities anthropogenic activities may present with respect towards our natural environment. He advocates that modern Civil Engineering practice does not have to be detrimental to the Earth’s ecosystems but rather can enhance both our quality of life and that of our planet. Kirby has developed numerous publications and has been invited to present these teaching/research efforts internationally (Egypt, Germany, U.K.). He has served as the primary mentor to dozens of graduate students and supporting faculty to hundreds of undergraduates, and looks forward to the opportunity to educate the next generation of young engineers.
Dr. Kirby was the 2018 recipient of the UAB Presidents Award for Excellence in Teaching for the UAB School of Engineering.
James McClintock, Ph.D. began his career at UAB in 1987 and has since served as Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (1999-2003) and as Interim Dean of the Graduate School (2003-2005). His research has been funded continuously over the past 25 years by the National Science Foundation and focuses on aspects of marine invertebrate nutrition, reproduction, and primarily, Antarctic marine chemical ecology. His research has grown to include studies of the impacts of rapid climate change and ocean acidification on Antarctic marine algae and invertebrates.
Dr. McClintock has published over 290 scientific publications, edited and written books and has been invited to make numerous scientific and popular science presentations. His research has been featured in a variety of media outlets including NPR‘s Diane Rehm Show and On Point with Tom Ashbrook, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discover, Scientific American, CNN, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and The Weather Channel. He has served on National Academy of Sciences workshops on Climate Change and Polar Ecosystems.
Claudette Poole, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Associate Program Director of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program at the at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine. Dr. Poole’s research interests include respiratory viral infections in vulnerable patient populations, the role of molecular diagnostics and antivirals. In addition to her clinical role in the division of infectious diseases she, participates in infection prevention both at Children’s Hospital and in the RNICU of the UAB Women and Infant’s Hospital.
Julie Price is a teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the UAB School of Public Health. Her courses include Introduction to Sustainability at the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as the Integrative Learning Experience for Masters of Public Health students in the Environmental Health concentration. Her courses require community engagement experiences for all students with local organizations addressing complex societal challenges such as waste, environmental justice, transportation and pollution.
She is formerly the founding manager of UAB Sustainability, during which she led university-wide efforts to foster environmental, social and economic systems that support a productive and equitable life for current and future generations. Julie currently devotes her time outside of the university to service on numerous boards, including the Freshwater Land Trust, the Cahaba River Society, Cool Green Trees and the Southern Environmental Law Center. She earned a B.S. in Natural Resources from The University of the South: Sewanee, an M.S. in Horticulture from Auburn University and Ph.D. in Biology from UAB.
