University of Nebraska Medical Center

From worsening water quality to respiratory and mental health impacts, drought can have profound and widespread impacts on the health of communities across the nation. To better prepare health professionals for responding to the health effects of drought, a research team from the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Public Health recently released a new guide, Drought and

Despite considerable public health concerns, drought assessments often disregard the health risks associated with drought exposure in the United States, particularly in regional-based assessments (Fard et al., 2022). One potential explanation of the lack of research is the complexity of linking drought to health outcomes. Drought lacks the direct pathway to health outcomes that many other climate

As with many other climate-related disasters, drought can lead to negative health outcomes. The significant impacts that drought can have on respiratory illness, such as bronchitis, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and asthma, are of particular concern. Drier conditions can increase dust, smoke, and other particulate matter, contributing to reduced air quality that exacerbates these

Drought is one of the costliest and deadliest climate-related disasters in the United States, necessitating public health engagement at a national level. Although drought is not typically thought of as a health hazard, the pathways to human health outcomes are prevalent and numerous. To better understand these pathways and the actions that could be taken to reduce health impacts associated with

Drought represents a globally relevant natural disaster linked to adverse health. But while evidence has shown agricultural communities to be particularly susceptible to drought, there is a limited understanding of how drought may impact occupational stress in farmers. To address this problem, NIDIS co-funded a study to examine the relationship between drought conditions and measures of job-

Over the last century, droughts have caused more deaths internationally than any other weather- or climate-related disaster. Droughts in the United States, however, are generally not thought of as public health threats. The National Drought and Public Health Summit, held June 17‒19, 2019 in Atlanta, brought together a diverse set of local, state, federal, tribal, non-profit, and academic