Recent weather events have posed widespread challenges to communities across the United States, but the impacts of those events are not evenly distributed. Due to a range of factors — including underlying health inequities and systemic disadvantages that inhibit preventive planning — American Indian and rural communities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather events. And while a considerable amount of research has been conducted on weather’s impact on urban and coastal communities, significantly less data is available on rural and American Indian populations, particularly from the Midwestern U.S. As a result, community planners, healthcare providers, and policymakers from this region are limited in their ability to create effective and best-informed weather-related policies.
A new research center housed in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health (SPH) aims to directly address these challenges and research gaps. Called the Mni Sota Center for Weather and Health (MCWH), the center will focus on how weather-related factors affect the health of people in the Upper Midwest, with an emphasis on how these changes are affecting American Indian tribes, rural populations, and other vulnerable individuals. In addition to gathering data, the center will also seek to develop actionable strategies for weather adaptation and mitigation that are culturally respectful and grounded in community traditions.
The MCWH is an interdisciplinary center that draws on expertise from across the University of Minnesota and the state to address the complexity of the health impacts of changing weather patterns. Bruce Alexander, Professor and Head in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, and Jessica Hellman, Director of the Institute on the Environment serve as center Co-Directors. The Community Engagement Core, led by Dr’s. Kyle Hill and Dana Carroll of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, will work with American Indian and rural communities to develop a community guided research agenda. Dr. Jesse Berman of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences and Dr. Paul Drawz of the Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine are leading a research project to study the health impacts of extreme weather. Another key collaborator is the MN EHR Consortium, a unique partnership of health care professionals, researchers, and leaders from Minnesota health systems and statewide health care organizations.
The work of the center will be guided by a “two-eyed seeing” approach. As Dr. Hill explains “The center’s work will adopt a ‘two-eyed seeing’ approach, which is a framework that integrates both Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) and Western scientific perspectives. By partnering with tribal communities and weaving together Indigenous ways of understanding ecosystems, culture, and spirituality with the research tools and methods of Western science, the MCWH aims to develop holistic and culturally responsive solutions for weather adaptation and mitigation.” The name of the center, Mni Sota, is a Dakota word meaning ‘where the waters reflect the sky, was chosen to represent the region and the overall mission of the center.
The work of the MCWH will be organized around four specific aims:
- Forming partnerships to help build regional research capacity to address the health impacts of extreme weather.
- Establishing a Community Engagement Core to co-develop a research agenda with American Indian and rural communities.
- Supporting research projects using health data from the Minnesota Electronic Health Records Consortium to study how extreme weather disproportionately affects people in at-risk communities.
- Developing a Pilot Project and Emerging Issues program that identifies and responds to key priorities of stakeholders.
