Cover image credit: Alandra Lopez

Now in its fourth year, the Stanford / LSHTM Planetary Health Postdoctoral Fellowship continues to yield impactful research on the intersections between health and environmental change. We are proud to welcome our two newest fellows, bid a warm farewell to our newly graduated fellow, and celebrate the ongoing accomplishments of our other researchers. 

This fellowship is a joint program created in 2020 by the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health and the Centre on Climate Change & Planetary Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) to support early-career researchers in tackling pressing questions in the field of planetary health. This field addresses health outcomes created by anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation, recognizing that human health and environmental health are inextricably entwined and codependent.

With increasing pressure on countries to meet sustainable development goals and halt accelerating climate and environmental challenges, understanding these complex links is critical. The fellowship program works to fill key gaps. With support and mentorship, fellows undertake the interdisciplinary research needed to propose novel, evidence-based solutions for safeguarding human health on a changing planet. Our two newest fellows, Nathalie Lambrecht and Cliff Zinyemba bring a focus on interconnections between agriculture, ecology, climate change, and human health. Their work will add to the body of research generated by prior fellows on climate change and air quality, the health impacts of wildfire smoke, tick-borne illnesses, and the intersections of environmental change and mental health.

Fellowship funders and partners include Stanford’s Human and Planetary Health initiative at the Woods Institute for the Environment, the Sean N Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research, the Center on Food Security and the Environment, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Bob and Kathy Burke.

Nathalie Lambrecht

Nathalie Lambrecht, our newest Stanford / LSHTM planetary health postdoctoral fellow, will be joining us this October from the Institute of Public Health, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Nathalie completed her PhD in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where she assessed intersections of small-holder livestock rearing, zoonotic disease exposure, and child nutrition. During her PhD, she also contributed to the University of Michigan President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality Food Analysis Team. Nathalie’s research focuses on climate-resilient agricultural interventions to improve maternal and child nutrition in low-resource settings. She also conducts research on the nutritional quality and environmental footprint of food service in institutional settings such as universities and hospitals, identifying pathways toward the adoption of diets in line with planetary health. 

During her fellowship, Nathalie will assess agroecological strategies to increase resilience against climate-related shocks. Such strategies could inform future policies for improved child nutrition and planetary health. She will focus on sub-Saharan Africa, exploring how approaches such as diversified crop-livestock production can improve child and adolescent nutrition and build food security in the face of increasing climate-related precipitation shocks. Stanford mentors for Nathalie include Steve Luby, Christopher Gardner, and Rosamond Naylor. 

Cliff Zinyemba

Cliff Zinyemba, a new addition to the Stanford / LSHTM planetary health cohort, earned his PhD in Public Health from the University of Cape Town in December 2020, based on his research focused on the effects of climate change on pesticide-related health risks. As a planetary health postdoctoral fellow, Cliff is currently investigating the spread of antibiotic-resistant (AMR) bacteria in Zimbabwe’s urban backyard poultry. His research is being conducted while based at MRC Unit the Gambia at LSHTM and The Health Research Unit Zimbabwe (THRU-Zim), part of the Biomedical Research and Training Institute.

Zimbabwe faces a significant challenge with antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains which can spread between humans, animals, and the environment. Cliff’s research examines the role of backyard poultry practice in disseminating AMR bacteria, specifically Salmonella and E. coli. He is particularly interested in exploring the contribution of rodents, often overlooked in bacteria transmission interventions in poultry husbandry, to the spread of these pathogens. 

Cliff’s research approach combines social science methodologies, including interviews and photovoice, with microbiology to assess AMR bacterial carriage in poultry, humans, rodents, and the immediate environment. By working closely with local communities, he aims to foster a collaborative approach to addressing AMR. This involves developing citizen science interventions that can potentially disrupt the rodent transmission chain of AMR pathogens. As antibiotics become increasingly ineffective, Cliff hopes that his findings will contribute to the development of policies and practices to prevent AMR within urban settings in Africa.

Stella Atim

Stella Atim, a researcher based at the LSHTM MRC Unit in Uganda, is investigating the environmental factors contributing to the high prevalence of Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) in Uganda. Specifically, her research involves modeling man-made land use changes and climatic factors that are driving a shift in the geographical range of ticks associated with the disease. She’s also examining changes in livestock farming practices that increase exposure. She hopes to identify regions in Uganda that are most vulnerable to the effects of land use and climate change on the prevalence of this disease. These findings are expected to provide recommendations for interventions to mitigate the impact of this disease in Uganda and help reduce the risk of it spreading to other countries.

Stella’s study has been organized into four major parts to ensure comprehensive data collection for analysis. Starting with a social science sub-study conducted in six districts in Uganda, Stella aimed to identify the sociocultural factors driving exposure to CCHF. She has then used these findings to inform the design of three subsequent sub-studies: human, livestock, and tick surveys.

Alandra Lopez

Alandra Lopez, a Stanford-based fellow, researches the chemistry of particulate matter to better understand how toxic metals behave during and after wildfires and prescribed fires to minimize human exposure. Alandra is particularly interested in how ecosystem and vegetation types, geology, and fire conditions influence the presence of soil-borne metals in particulate matter. Soils naturally enriched in metals can be found around the world and often overlap with highly populated, fire-prone regions. Particulate-bound metals pose serious health risks, but current regulations do not account for varying toxicities of particles based on their size and chemical composition. By gleaning the environmental controls of the presence and nature of geogenic metals in fire smoke, she hopes to contribute to developing strategies to mitigate exposure concerns. Alandra’s work makes a key contribution to the field of wildfire research, standing to inform key regulations for both fire management and worker safety. 

Alandra also collaborates with the Stanford Climate and Energy Policy Practicum lab to explore particulate matter emissions from prescribed fires and the utility of low-cost air samplers for tracking local air quality. Managing wildland fuels by controlled fires, including prescribed fires and cultural burning, has been shown to significantly reduce risk of catastrophic wildfires. However, we lack data showing the extent to which particulate matter emissions from prescribed fires differ from wildfires, and consequently the health impacts of prescribed fire smoke to fire practitioners and proximal communities. By combining field measurements and insights from stakeholder interviews, the team is developing a report motivated to standardize data collection of particulate matter emissions, help facilitate comparisons of air quality from prescribed fires and wildfires, and ultimately support increased use of prescribed fires for wildfire risk management. 

Image credit: Stony Brook University

Minghao Qiu

Minghao Qiu, our newest Stanford / LSHTM fellowship alumnus, has completed his fellowship and accepted a faculty position at Stony Brook University, where he will continue his research at the intersections of climate change and human health. He will also teach both undergraduate and graduate students. During his time at Stanford, Minghao worked to quantify the impacts of climate change on air quality and human health through channels such as drought and wildfires – focusing on effects that have been largely overlooked in prior climate impact assessments. His research on the climate change effects on wildfire smoke and mortality has been discussed by the US Environmental Protection Agency and may help inform an updated social cost of carbon used in climate policy making. While a fellow, Minghao published six research articles in peer-reviewed journals, including three first-authored papers published in PNAS, Science Advances, and Nature Communications and attracted significant outside interest from media outlets and policy makers. 

Applications for this fellowship are currently not open. Please stay tuned to our website and newsletter for the latest updates.