When people think about brain health and aging, they might first think about the role of genetics or lifestyle factors. Both factors are important, though a growing body of research shows something else is also playing a major role in shaping how our brains age.

Researchers interested in studying the impacts of temperature on health face decisions on how to operationalize and measure exposures. This webinar “CAFE University: Considerations for temperature in public health studies” by Lauren Mock and Shreya Nalluri explores the myriad choices required when using temperature data to study health outcomes, from choice of metric and dataset to the study design.  

As sea-level rise worsens the impacts of hurricanes and storm surges, it also leads to more frequent tidal and seasonal floods in coastal areas, commonly referred to as sunny-day, blue sky, or nuisance flooding. 

Housing is an important protective force and has important impacts on health and wellbeing, especially during rapid environmental change and disasters.

Research on disasters and health has increasingly leveraged linked administrative claims data and detailed spatial information on natural disaster events in order to move beyond single-case descriptions toward quasi-experimental designs.

The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is an ongoing longitudinal study of middle-aged and older adults. It is designed to be nationally-representative of the U.S. population over age 50 and it adds a new cohort every six years. 

Older adults are a key group at risk from climate-related threats, including extreme heat, poor air quality, and flooding. While these hazards were once primarily seen as risks to the heart and lungs, new evidence shows they also play a significant role in brain health, aging, and an increased risk of dementia.

A new report from Winkler & Mockrin (2025) entitled “Aging and wildfire risk to communities” explores the exposure of older populations to wildfires. 

High temperatures are heating not only our neighborhoods and homes, but also our very biology, as we suggested in a recent study.

If you live in the Eastern U.S. or the Midwest, you’ve probably spent the last few days breathing in that now-familiar sign of summer: Canadian wildfire smoke. But this isn’t just a North American problem.

The relationship between air pollution and negative health outcomes (including mortality), has been well-documented across many disciplines. A bit more recently, researchers have begun to explore how air pollution may also affect cognitive decline. 

This post turns to the importance of considering other major sources of air pollution exposure—primarily indoor air pollution (IAP), which constitutes a significant and relatively understudied component of total exposure. 

Frameworks, tools that can be used to inform research and develop interventions, can help conceptualize scientific problems and visualize complex relationships between factors that influence health.