As an M.D./Ph.D. student, Trisha Dalapati is immersed deeply in science every day.
But in her work related to climate, the connection is also deeply personal.
Growing up in the United States with family in West Bengal, India, Dalapati was acutely aware of how climate-related factors-such as rising temperatures and irregular monsoon seasons-affect the spread of infectious diseases.
"I saw firsthand how climate influences these diseases in the communities where my family lives," Dalapati said. "I've had several relatives get malaria and dengue, and my aunt recently passed away from dengue. It's very much a personal connection. These experiences shape the way I think about disease transmission, especially as I can directly see how weather patterns are evolving in my ancestral hometown."
Drawn to study infectious diseases
Her passion around infectious diseases and climate took further shape as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, where she studied malaria during pregnancy. Pregnancy puts individuals at a higher risk of suffering from severe malaria and poses a deadly threat to the developing fetus. Climate change may increase the likelihood and pace of malaria transmission.
"I've always been interested in medicine, but it wasn't until my undergraduate research that I realized how deeply climate change is affecting global health," said Dalapati.
When she joined the program at Duke, Dalapati served as the sustainability chair in the medical school and helped create lectures on climate and health in the medical school curriculum with a group. The collaboration led to the development of a pilot course, which is now a Duke Coursera course available worldwide.
"As a first-year medical student, I took a Coursera course, and it was awesome. You could learn at your own pace and watch it from anywhere. There were even learners from outside of Duke taking the course. The vision of the initial group of 10 of us was: let's make a course that can be readily accessed by people all over the world, to anyone interested in learning about climate and health," she said.
Duke School of Nursing Dorothy L. Powell Term Chair of Nursing AnnMarie Walton worked closely with Dalapati on the pilot course development.
"Working with Trisha on the pilot course was truly a gift. Trisha contributed critical insights about pedagogical strategies that worked well in her other courses that we were able to replicate and helped us anticipate how activities might be received by the learners. She did it all with the enthusiasm, energy and curious spirit that is characteristic of Duke's best and brightest students," Walton said.
A platform to share practical knowledge
As part of the pilot course, Dalapati and others figured out different approaches to distribute information to students who already had a lot on their plate. Collaborating with Duke environmental scientist Brian McAdoo, she helped develop and co-host a podcast that brings together experts from both fields to discuss the growing impacts of climate change on health. Their Climate Pulse podcast launched with three episodes on Spotify; more episodes are in production.
"Climate change isn't just about rising temperatures. It's also about the real-world health impacts, from heat stroke to the spread of infectious diseases," she said. "We hope the podcast provides a platform where experts can share practical knowledge with both healthcare workers and the broader public."
Through her own experience and studies, Dalapati has seen the need for climate education during training.
"During my clinical rotations at Duke right in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that infectious diseases are a global issue, and the link to climate is undeniable," she said. "Climate change is affecting our health in ways that we're only beginning to understand."
