The Center for Climate Change & Health functions as a hub for the a climate change Community of Practice within the Public Health Institute, comprising PHI program directors and principle investigators addressing climate change and health in their work. By bringing together these public health leaders and researcher from across topical areas, the Center helps PHI bring to the issue of climate change the range of expertise required by the scope and breadth of this challenge.

• Linda Rudolph, MD, MPH

  

  Linda Rudolph, MD, MPH, is the Director of the Center for Climate Change and Health at PHI. She also provides consultation to local jurisdictions to advance implementation of Health in All Policies, and participates internationally in training and consultation related to HiAP and climate change and health.

  Previously, Rudolph served as the deputy director of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH)’s Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Public Health and the health officer and public health director for the City of Berkeley, CA. While at CDPH, Rudolph chaired the Strategic Growth Council Health in All Policies Task Force and the California Climate Action Team Public Health Work Group.

  Rudolph has also been the chief medical officer for Medi-Cal Managed Care, medical director for the California Division of Workers’ Compensation, executive medical director for the Industrial Medical Council, staff physician in the CDPH Occupational Health program, and a physician for the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers’ International Union.

  Rudolph received her MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and MPH (Epidemiology) from UC Berkeley. She is board certified in Occupational Medicine.

• Neil Maizlish, PhD, MPH

  

  Neil Maizlish is an epidemiologist with over 25 years of experience in quantitative research methods, statistics, and health informatics in local and state government, academia, community clinics, unions, and the private sector. He currently a senior Research Scientist at the Center for Climate Change and Health and the Public Health Alliance of Southern California, projects of the Public Health Institute, Oakland, CA.

  He previously served as a research scientist at the California Department of Public Health, where his focus was the public health impacts of climate change and the built environment, modeling the health co-benefits of active transport, climate and health adaptation, and the development of healthy community indicators. His previous posts also include research manager for the California Division of Workers’ Compensation, community epidemiologist for the City of Berkeley Public Health Division, Fulbright scholar in Latin America, consultant to the World Health Organization, and adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Savannah North, MPH

  

  Savannah North is the Project Manager for the Climate and Health Learning Collaborative project with the Center for Climate Change and Health and the Safe Surplus Food Donation project with the Public Health Alliance of Southern California. She received her B.S. in Microbiology from UC Davis in 2014, and her MPH (Sociomedical Sciences) from Columbia University in 2016. Her Master’s Thesis included the design of a multi-level intervention to address the rates of early marriage in Bangladesh. Prior to joining PHI, Savannah worked on sexual and reproductive health programming and evaluation with the Women’s Refugee Commission in NYC, and with ICAP, Columbia University.

   

• Catherine Harrison, RN, MPH

  

  Catherine Harrison is a Program Manager for the Center for Climate and Health, leading efforts to increase the physician voice around climate change, its health impacts and co-benefit solutions for climate and health within community, media and policy arenas. Her interests are community health, with a focus on reducing health inequities through local partnership, political engagement and advocacy for racial and economic justice. She is a registered nurse with experience in medical-surgical inpatient care, college student health, community health programming, community organizing and international non-profit management.  In the past she served as the Public Health Nursing Supervisor at the University of Minnesota Boynton Health Service, the Executive Director of Rural Health Care Initiative in Tikonko, Sierra Leone, and an adult medical-surgical nurse at Denver Health in Denver, Colorado. Prior to joining the Center for Climate Change Health, she worked as a Research Intern at the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco while completing her graduate studies. Catherine received her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and her Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of California-Berkeley.

• Laura Buckley, MPH

  Laura Buckley is coordinating the Center’s efforts to create a research roadmap on the potential health impacts of emerging electricity-generating systems for the California Energy Commission. She received her MPH at Columbia University in environmental health sciences with a focus on climate and health. Prior to this, Laura studied anthropology and biology at Fordham University and worked in international development programming and research related to the inequitable burden of climate change on women and girls globally. She is excited by this opportunity to understand the potential risks of new technologies to workers and the public in the hopes of working towards a healthier energy system for all.

• Zachariah Baker, JD

  

  Zachariah (Zach) Baker is a Project Coordinator for the Climate, Health, and Equity Framework project.  Zach brings to the project over a decade of policy and advocacy experience focused on protecting the environment and promoting public health.  He has worked at the local, state, and federal policy levels on a variety of public health issues including childhood obesity, sustainable food systems, and climate change.  Most recently, Zach served as a city councilor in Corvallis, Oregon and Chair of Corvallis’ Climate Action Task Force facilitating the development of a climate action plan for the city.  Zach holds a law degree from the University of Oregon with a focus in Environmental and Natural Resources Law and a BA from Tufts University in community health and political science.

• Minna Toloui

  Minna Toloui is a Project Coordinator at the Center for Climate Change and Health. Minna is a lifetime East Bay Area resident passionate about working towards a just, equitable society. Growing up in the shadow of the Chevron Refinery in Richmond, CA, she became aware of the inequities facing her community, related to environmental health, disenfranchisement, opportunities to thrive, and beyond. She soon connected the dots to climate change, and has worked to focus on this field ever since. She sees the climate justice fight–and all of its intersections– as a pressing iteration of the movement for civil and human rights. Minna holds a B.A. and B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley in Environmental Studies and Geography.

• Anne Kelsey Lamb, MPH

  

  Director, Regional Asthma Management and Prevention

  Anne Kelsey Lamb, MPH, is the director of Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP) and the co-director of the Climate Change and Public Health Project in PHI’s Center for Climate Change and Public Health.  Serving as RAMP director since 2002, Lamb provides strategic guidance in working toward the organization’s vision and mission, ensuring a highly effective organization and innovative, successful programs.

  With a strong interest in both chronic illness and social inequities, she leads all components of the organization’s efforts to reduce the burden of asthma in the San Francisco Bay Area, including: technical assistance to community-based asthma coalitions; the provision of a clearinghouse of information on asthma; convening groups to facilitate networks and capacity building; and creating change through policy advocacy.

  Under Lamb’s guidance, RAMP has evolved, significantly expanding its breadth, scope and size. In 2007, RAMP was awarded a five-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become a Center of Excellence in the Elimination of Disparities.

  Previously, she was a health educator at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif. Other previous professional affiliations include: the National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Genetics Program and the Prevention Center of Boston. Lamb received a master’s degree in public health from the University of Michigan.

• Paul English, PhD, MPH

  

  Branch Science Advisor, California Environmental Health Tracking Program

  Paul English, PhD, MPH, is state environmental epidemiologist and branch scientific advisor for the Environmental Health Investigations Branch at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).

  English has more than 15 years of experience working in environmental public health for the CDPH. He focuses on the public health impacts of climate change, spatial epidemiology, environmental health issues at the U.S.-Mexico border, environmental links to asthma (in particular, exposure to traffic pollution) and adverse reproductive outcomes.

  English was a World Health Organization advisor contributing to a systematic review of health indicators of climate change and has assisted local government and health agencies in India on heat preparedness.

  Over the last seven years, English has served as principal investigator of the California Environmental Health Tracking Program, which takes a community-based approach to develop surveillance and biomonitoring systems for environmental hazards, exposures and environmentally related chronic disease. He has been dedicated to responding to community needs and concerns regarding environmentally related disease by integrating environmental epidemiology, health education, community participation, geographic information systems and spatial methodologies, and health policy.

  English received his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

• Michael Dimock, MA

  

  Director, Roots of Change

  Michael R. Dimock, president of Roots of Change Fund (ROC), is a national food movement organizer and thought leader on food and farming systems needed for the 21st century. ROC is developing roadmaps to strategic coordination and campaign victory for the California food movement with a specific focus on supporting development of the California Food Policy Council.

  Dimock has focused on agriculture and food since 1989. He was a marketing executive in Europe for agribusiness, farmed organically for three years in Sonoma County, and in 1992 founded Ag Innovations Network, where he began his work on consensus building and strategic planning to create healthier food and agriculture. From 2002 to 2007, he was chairman of Slow Food USA and a member of Slow Food International’s board of directors.

  Author Katrina Fried, and photographer Paul Mobley feature Dimock in their latest book, Everyday Heroes: 50 Americans Changing The World, published in October 2012. Dimock’s love for food systems grew from experience on an 11,000-acre cattle ranch in Santa Clara County in the late 1960s and a development project with Himalayan subsistence farmers in Nepal in the late 70s. In the 1980s, he worked in television and documentary film production and was a campaign worker for California Governor Jerry Brown.

  Dimock received a BA in history with honors at UCLA in 1983 and a master’s in international affairs at Columbia University in 1988.

• Michelle Bashin, MHS

  Director, Clean Cookstoves Project

  Michelle Bashin, MHS, is program director of the Cleaner Cookstoves Project, which seeks to bring safe household energy to the world’s poorest people. Bashin has over 20 years’ experience implementing global public health programs and focusing on health communication and behavior change. Daily life in a poor West African village convinced her that public health can improve the lives of people in low-income countries, sometimes radically.

  Bashin’s technical skills include strategic planning, program design and media materials development. She has collaborated with government and non-governmental organizations, building communication capacity in such topics as HIV/AIDS prevention, maternal and child health, environmental health, tobacco control and reproductive health. Bashin has worked for the Johns Hopkins University/Center for Communication Programs and Kaiser Permanente. She has also worked in 18 African and three Latin American countries and is fluent in Spanish and French.

  Bashin holds a master’s degree in health sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2007, Georgetown University honored her work with the Organization of African First Ladies Against AIDS designing the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign, “Treat Every Child As Your Own.”