What began as a high school summer project for Anna Apetrei-Pandrea (BSPH ’29) eventually became a published review examining how climate change can affect human health in ways that extend far beyond rising temperatures.
The narrative review, published in June in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, examines the interconnected effects of global warming and climate change on public health, from the spread of vector-borne diseases to neurological and mental health concerns.
The current literature also points to the importance of proactive policies, strategies and education to address the health effects of climate change and calls for global action that transcends political views, geographic boundaries and individual interests.
“The one takeaway I would really try to push to everyone is that global warming and climate change aren’t just about temperature or catastrophic events,” Apetrei-Pandrea said. “They’ll affect a lot of different health outcomes.”
Apetrei-Pandrea, who is also pursuing a degree in public and professional writing in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, first drafted the paper before her junior year of high school through the University of Pittsburgh Health Career Scholars Academy.
While other students focused on specific illnesses or injuries, Apetrei-Pandrea said she was drawn to investigating climate change because of its broad implications for health.
“Once you start digging deeper into it, it’s not just that it’s getting warmer,” she said. “There are a lot of things that could happen because it’s getting warmer, and I don’t think people really realize that. Public health is very interdisciplinary, and climate change hits a lot of different things.”
She continued developing the paper throughout high school but struggled to navigate the publication process on her own. That changed when she attended a two-week summer program at the University of Oxford before her senior year and met Stefan Dascalu of Oxford’s Department of Biology.
“Stefan and I ended up talking about the topic, and I mentioned that I was trying to write this paper and it really wasn’t working out for me,” she said. “We ended up really cultivating it into what it is now.”
The two continued working on the review throughout Apetrei-Pandrea’s senior year.
The process, however, wasn’t always easy.
“At one point, even my parents were like, ‘Maybe you should just not try anymore,’” she said. “But it worked out for the best, so I’m really happy with it and I’m happy with what it’s been doing.”
Now entering her second year at Pitt, Apetrei-Pandrea plans to continue exploring the intersection of the environment and human health. She is also on the pre-med track and is considering areas including surgery, infectious diseases, epidemiology and clinical research.
For now, she hopes her first publication demonstrates that young people have a stake—and a voice—in conversations surrounding climate change.
“I really wanted to submit it because I wanted people to see that young people care about these issues,” she said. “Ultimately, we’re the ones who are going to be living with them. Our children will be living with them, too.”
For her, that means encouraging readers to think beyond rising temperatures and recognize the many ways climate change can affect health and society.
“I hope people read it and try to understand how climate change affects different things. That’s my wish for it.”
She also sees collaboration across disciplines as essential to addressing those challenges.
“People from different fields will need to team up and work together to solve the issues that we will be confronted with, and I am so happy and proud to be here—at Pitt’s School of Public Health—where the health issues related to climate change are main avenues of interest,” she said.
-Ava Dzurenda