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Leyao Wang, assistant professor of epidemiology, has been selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to be part of its 2024-25 NIH Climate and Health Scholars third cohort.

The NIH Climate and Health Scholars Program was established to help build climate and health research capacity at the NIH. It is a vital component of the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative, an urgent, cross-cutting NIH effort to stimulate research to reduce health threats from climate change across the lifespan and build health resilience in individuals, communities and nations around the world, especially among those at highest risk.

“This is a great honor and an opportunity for me to work with the National Institutes of Health to advance research and solutions for climate change,” Wang said.

Each climate and health (CH) scholar is hosted by an NIH institute, center or office (ICO). During this time, the CH scholars are invited to collaborate with NIH staff on a diverse array of activities to share their scientific knowledge with NIH intramural investigators, program staff and the broader NIH community.

Wang will be hosted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. There, she will work closely with program directors and other staff to conduct research on climate and lung health and co‐develop a workshop on relevant topics. In addition, she will engage in NIH-wide seminars and webinars to deliver her research findings and promote research in the field of climate change and health.

In September, Wang joined the faculty at UMass Amherst from the Washington University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the human microbiome and lung health in the context of climate change. Her research group utilizes epidemiological approaches as well as molecular experiments to understand the assembly of the microbiota in early life and their functional roles in diseases.

In 2018, Wang and her collaborators at San Juan City Hospital in Puerto Rico started conducting a birth cohort study called Hurricane as the Origin of Later Alterations in microbiome (HOLA). HOLA utilized the devastating Hurricane Maria as a natural experiment to characterize how a major disaster may alter the human microbiome in early infancy and lead to increased disease risks later in life, highlighting the profound threat of climate change on human health and the urgent need to understand the science, solutions and policy implications.

For more information about the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative, visit www.climateandhealth.nih.gov.