PHEER Newsletters
We have compiled a list of our past newsletters. If you would like to receive future updates from PHEER, join us!
Newsletter Spotlights
We love to highlight the great work and success of our members! Each quarter, we highlight one member and one publication in our newsletter. See the past newsletter spotlights below.
Please email us if you would like to be featured in an upcoming newsletter!
Dr. Rima Habre, ScD, MSc
Dr. Rima Habre is Professor of Environmental Health and Spatial Sciences at the University of Southern California (USC). She leads the CLIMAte-related Exposures, Adaptation, and Health Center (CLIMA) Center at USC. She is also an MPI of NEXUS: Network for Exposomics in the U.S., which is the cross-NIH research coordinating center for advancing exposomics and precision environmental health. Her research aims to understand the effects of co-occurring environmental exposures, including air pollution mixtures and sources, climate-related exposures and adaptation vulnerabilities, and social stressors on health across the life course. She has been studying the effects of wildfire smoke exposure on birth outcomes and children’s health, and how we can improve exposure assessment to its complex chemical constituents, for several years. With the 2025 Los Angeles fires, she has been working closely with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and with the LA Fire Health consortium to launch exposure and health studies to better characterize cumulative exposures and understand their long term health effects in impacted communities. Dr. Habre also served as a scientific advisor on the Science for Disaster Reduction federal interagency working group on integrating geo and health data in disasters, and especially wildfires, to improve disaster response, recovery and future preparedness. Dr. Habre received her Doctor of Science in Environmental Health from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
PHEER member Dr. Joan Casey (University of Washington) and colleagues Kaiser Permanente, University of California Berkeley, Columbia University, the Scripps Institution, and the University of Rennes recently published “The 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires and Outpatient Acute Health Care Utilization” in the JAMA Health Forum journal.
The research uncovers how Los Angeles fires affected people’s health and how people navigated the health care system during an emergency. The authors found that outpatient healthcare visits did rise above normal levels, particularly for respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms. Additionally, virtual care visits rose significantly, potentially representing a shift in care settings used during this climate disaster.
Read the full paper here.
