Climate and Health in Virginia

Investigating underlying causes of climate-related diseases and disparities

Funded by Environmental Institute, University of Virginia, US

2024 - Present

Topics: Geospatial health modelling · Environmental epidemiology · Climate health · Health equity · Big data analytics · Meta-analysis · Case time-series · Distributed lag non-linear models (DLNMs)

My contributions: Conceptualization · Data curation · Data analysis · Data visualization · Cartography · Software development · Code management · Writing scientific manuscripts

Skills used: Geospatial health modeling · Big data analytics · R · RMarkdown · Git · GNU Make · R package development

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This project investigates the climate-related diseases and disparities in Virginia.

It focuses on whether health impacts associated with climate conditions differ by age, race, ethnicity, and gender. The study integrates de-identified patient-level health data from the All-Payer Claims Database (APCD) with climate and air quality data, as well as social and demographic information from the CDC Social Vulnerability Index, state agencies, and U.S. Census datasets.

By bringing these data sources together, the project aims to identify factors that contribute to unequal health risks during climate-related events such as extreme heat. The findings will support more targeted public health communication and improve understanding of how different populations respond to climate extremes, helping inform preparedness for future climate-related risks.

Outcomes

Publications

Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Novicoff, W. M., DeGuzman, P. B., Davis, R. E. (2026). Assessing the Importance of Spatial Scale in Climate-Health Models: the Effect of Temperature on Emergency Department Visits in Richmond, Virginia. GeoHealth, 10, e2026GH001852

Abstract:
Climate-health studies often rely on data from a single high-quality weather station to represent the exposure of individuals living in the surrounding region. However, with the availability of various gridded climatic data sets, a critical question is whether spatially explicit data can better capture individual environmental exposures and reveal stronger climate-health associations. We investigated the impact of spatial-scale climatic variability and representativeness for emergency department (ED) visits in Richmond, Virginia, United States. This study compared the climate-health relationship using data from a weather station and the ERA5 reanalysis from 2016 to 2022. We evaluated the correlation of the two time-series and used generalized additive models to compare the temperature-ED visit associations across four nested spatial scales. The results were highly consistent across all spatial scales. The station and ERA5 data exhibited similar distributions. The temperature-ED visit relationships showed strong agreement between the two data sources, reflected in both location-specific and pooled estimates. Although ERA5 produced slightly lower cold-related and higher heat-related estimates at extreme temperatures, no marked differences were found between the two data sources. Our findings suggest that, in this region with a relatively homogeneous climate, the variations of regional climate might be small enough to fall within the model’s expected uncertainty. Although this result may not apply in regions with considerable local climate variation, data from a single high-quality station in many regions are appropriate to model climate-health relationships over the greater surrounding areas. We recommend similar comparative work across diverse climatic settings to evaluate the generalizability of this conclusion.

[R-package] chva.extras

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Le-Huynh, T.-L., Davis, R. E., Novicoff, W. M., & DeGuzman, P. B. (2025). chva.extras v0.1.0: Supplementary Tools for Climate and Health Research in VA (Version v0.1.0) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14910967

chva.extras is a collection of supplementary functions and templates designed to support climate and health research in Virginia, including tools for data manipulation, analysis, and visualization, tailored to handle large datasets.

Explore the package at https://le-huynh.github.io/chva.extras/

Reproducible research code

Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Novicoff, W. M., DeGuzman, P. B., Davis, R. E. (2026). Reproducible code for “Assessing the Importance of Spatial Scale in Climate-Health Models: the Effect of Temperature on Emergency Department Visits in Richmond, Virginia” (Version v1.0.0) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20076108

Scientific & Professional Presentations

  • Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Novicoff, W., DeGuzman, P., Davis, R., Heat and Emergency Department Visits: Does Social Vulnerability Matter? [Oral presentation], 2026 Climate Fellows Research Showcase, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, September 2026.
  • Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Davis, R. E., Novicoff, W. M., Enfield, K. B., Are Fireworks Associated with Respiratory Emergency Department Visits in Virginia? [Oral presentation], 24th International Congress of Biometeorology, Novi Sad, Serbia, July 2026.
  • Kakatkar, S., Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Davis, R. E., Heat, Air Quality, and Emergency Department Diagnoses: Social Vulnerability and Biometeorological Stress in Virginia [Oral presentation], 24th International Congress of Biometeorology, Novi Sad, Serbia, July 2026.
  • Davis, R. E., Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Novicoff, W. M., DeGuzman, P., Assessing Spatial Scale in Climate-Health Research [Oral presentation], 24th International Congress of Biometeorology, Novi Sad, Serbia, July 2026.
  • Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Davis, R. E., Novicoff, W. M., Enfield, K. B., Are Fireworks Associated with Respiratory Emergency Department Visits in Virginia? [Poster presentation], 2026 UVA Postdoctoral Research Symposium, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, April 2026.
  • Ha, J., Hosseini, P., Davis, R., Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Novicoff, W., Delaar, G., Yoo, J., & Sa. H., Urban green space and emergency department visits during heat waves [Oral presentation], Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, Portland, Oregon, USA, March 2026.
  • Le‑Huynh, T.‑L., Novicoff, W., DeGuzman, P., Davis, R., Exploring climate-health disparities in Virginia: Toward AI-driven solutions [Poster presentation], Environmental Futures Forum 2025, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, October 2025.