May 28
Block Cinema: Northwestern University Evanston, IL
TicketsKate Burrows
Environmental Health Scientist at the University of Chicago
Trouble the Water— Health Impacts of Hurricanes
Program Description
Hurricane Katrina was a shamefully defining, yet widely transformative moment in American life. Revealing structural conditions of racialized inequality in everything from civil engineering and disaster relief to industrial contamination and mental health, the storm led to lasting changes in the study of public health and sociology. Before our screening of TROUBLE THE WATER, the Block welcomes Dr. Kate Burrows, Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences at University of Chicago, to discuss how scientists examine the short- and long-term health impacts of hurricanes, and to reflect on the role of Katrina on the study of community well-being over the last 20 years.
Film Synopsis
A redemptive tale of an aspiring rap artist surviving failed levees and her own troubled past and seizing a chance for a new beginning.
As Hurricane Katrina raged around them, Scott and Kimberly Rivers Roberts took shelter with some neighbors in their attic in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. Kimberly, an aspiring rapper, brought her video camera and filmed herself, her husband and their friends before and during the devastating storm. This footage is at the heart of Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's documentary about the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, along with the filmmakers' own footage of Kimberly and Scott rebuilding their lives afterwards.
Photo credit: Zeitgeist Films
About the Speaker
Kate Burrows is an environmental health scientist at the University of Chicago, where she studies the impact of climate change on human health.
Dr. Kate Burrows studies the impacts of climate change on human health and wellbeing. She is trained in mixed methods approaches and uses a combination of qualitative interviews and bigger data analyses to investigate the ways in which climate and weather-related extremes impact individual and community health. Dr. Burrows has interdisciplinary training in environmental epidemiology (PhD, Yale University School of the Environment) and social-behavioral sciences (MPH, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health), which allows her to investigate global health issues from a unique perspective that incorporates sociocultural determinants of health and environmental exposures. As a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University, Dr. Burrows evaluated both the short- and long-term impacts of hurricanes on a range of health outcomes, including cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalizations and disability. Her current research is focused on the mental health impacts of extreme temperature.