As one of the newest members to join the HE²AT Center, I've been discovering a great deal about extreme heat's effects on health, but also about myself and what I'm passionate about, on this journey.
I'm a South African-born doctor who was trained in Bosnia and now works as a researcher in Ireland, alongside a small team of HE²AT researchers. Our team includes two scientists from Wits Planetary Health Research: Craig Parker, a data scientist who leads our research project, and Samantha Zermatten-Jack, a climate scientist. We also collaborate with the University of Cape Town's Climate Systems Analysis Group team.
There's so much that I've learnt from these scientists, and many of the other researchers at the HE²AT Center, that I'm hoping to apply in my career to help the world, and especially other doctors, understand the unmistakable link between heat and health better.
My Journey From Doctor To Researcher
I am a medical doctor, and my purpose has always been to help people. Once it became time for me to start seeing patients, I asked myself how else I could contribute to my community. It's this question that led me to research.
Benjamin is a South African-born doctor now researching heat and health with the HE²AT Center.
I looked at Africa, our continent – the place where I was born and one I feel connected to. I thought that if we, as doctors and researchers, can give a voice to more African communities who need to be heard, then this is how we contribute to our world.
It's with this thinking that I joined the HE²AT Center as a fresh medical graduate. I was placed under Craig, who leads a major part of the research at the Centre. This has given our team a unique combination of skill sets. I help our data scientists understand the medical information, while they bring a deep understanding of climate data to our research.
This role has given me a real space to develop the clinical skills I had as a doctor into a set of data and research abilities that are useful to my team. It's only been seven months since I joined the team, but I've already picked up skills in coding and data harmonisation, which gives me the technical know-how to use the information we have about heat and health in more ways.
When I joined the Centre from Bosnia, I looked at the research team's data from the perspective of a doctor. But eventually, under Craig's guidance, I've started seeing more than patient information. I now understand how much we can discover about extreme heat and how it affects people when we have the right data.
Discovering Extreme Heat's Effects on Health
Our team's work looks at how rising temperatures and extreme heat affect the human body. This matters because heat touches almost every system in the body: how well we sleep, how healthy our heart stays, how well our kidneys work, how much inflammation builds up, and whether women have healthy pregnancies.
Our team looks specifically at heat in African cities, where not everyone has the same access to infrastructure, housing and spaces that help cool us down. Here, our most vulnerable community members are hit hardest by heat: pregnant women, babies, people working outdoors and those with chronic health conditions.
Research into heat in Africa is even more important if we consider that heat is a silent exposure. Because we don't immediately see the effects of heat on communities, we doctors don't always think about it when we are treating patients. Government policies to protect communities from extreme heat also aren't being created fast enough.
Why Research on Heat and Health is Vital
The tools that I've learned to use allow me to map out any area we're interested in studying, whether that's a country or a city. My team can use these maps and build on them with complex heat and health data.
The HE²AT team has shown me that extreme heat's effects on health aren't getting the attention they deserve. Doctors are overlooking the impact of heat on patients during hot periods, and communities aren't preparing for heatwaves and rising temperatures. There is limited guidance for healthcare workers, limited information to help communities protect themselves, and limited use of weather data to help hospitals and health systems plan for extreme heat.
Closing this gap is especially important in Africa, where people often get exposed to extreme heat more frequently than on other continents, yet have fewer ways of protecting themselves and adapting to their situation. Heat also affects health in a very wide variety of ways that most people don't think about, and extreme heat's effects are felt most by people who are already struggling.
The work that I've been doing creates evidence of how heat and health are linked, especially on the African continent. This information can be used to build early warning systems and support doctors, community health workers, and government leaders in protecting the people most at risk during extreme heat.
As a doctor, it's especially important to me that our research eventually helps to improve systems like hospitals. It's not enough for communities to understand extreme heat's effects on their health. Healthcare workers, like doctors, nurses and specialists, have to be just as aware of the links between heat and health so they can recognise when heat is affecting their patients and know who's most at risk.
"As a doctor, it's especially important to me that our research eventually helps to improve systems like hospitals."
If research like the work we're doing at the HE²AT Center can reach healthcare systems across the world, then we'll be more prepared. COVID-19 was a pandemic that no healthcare system was truly prepared for, but now we can prepare for heatwave emergencies. We can start protecting our patients now and reduce the impact that extreme heat will have on their health.
A Rewarding, Collaborative First Step
It's been very rewarding to combine my medical knowledge with the research being done by my team, and to see that our findings can have a real impact on the communities we're hoping to reach. Working in heat and health research allows me to serve people at a scale that goes beyond seeing one patient at a time. It feels like a genuine calling for this stage of my career.
My role at the HE²AT Center has been a welcome challenge to learn new things and be actively involved in heat and health issues. This flexible mindset has been useful because my work combines medical knowledge, data science, and climate research. Methods in these fields are always evolving and changing, and the challenges we're trying to solve do not fit neatly into one research discipline.
"My role at the HE²AT Center has been a welcome challenge to learn new things and be actively involved in heat and health issues."
A large part of my work has been engaging with senior researchers, climate scientists, and data analysts. The conversations I had with them have taught me a great deal about other academic fields and shown me how each of these specialties helps us understand heat and health better. The project combines so many diverse disciplines, and that is what makes its results so valuable.
Collaboration with team members in different countries has helped me think and work in new and better ways. Learning from colleagues across disciplines and countries has also changed how I solve problems. I now look at challenges from a variety of perspectives, or a broader lens, than I ever would have been able to before.
My Next Steps, Uncharted
Many doctors don't receive the training they need to fully understand and treat extreme heat's effects on patients. But my research at the Centre has shown me just how important it is. While I'm still working on what this means for the next steps in my career, there are so many doors that are left to be opened in my research on heat and health. Our team is receiving and processing data from Abidjan and Ireland, and there is a lot of territory to cover.
One thing is clear: I know I want to continue contributing to work that protects vulnerable populations and to be a voice, supported by data and research, for communities whose own voices are too often not heard.