Thanks to the support of la Mobilière, the University of Bern is able to establish an endowed professorship for climate impact and public health in inhabited areas (read the press release). The professorship is endowed with a total of two million Swiss francs and sheds light on an important aspect of climate change that has only been researched to a limited extent in Switzerland to date.
The Executive Board of the University of Bern has appointed Ana Maria Vicedo Cabrera to the new professorship. She has headed the Climate Change and Health group at the University of Bern since 2019, which is based at the OCCR and the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (profile story of Ana Vicedo from 2019). The newly appointed Professor of Climate and Health studied and completed her doctorate at the University of Valencia, Spain in the field of environmental pollution, toxicology and health. She also completed a Master's degree in Epidemiology at the University of Turin, Italy. She then carried out research at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel and was an assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
According to ‘Carbon Brief’, a British website that reports on the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy, an international study led by Ana Vicedo in ‘Nature Climate Change’ was the most widely covered research paper on climate change worldwide in 2021. The study on heat-related mortality due to climate change was picked up in 865 online articles by 617 media outlets. The study was also mentioned in 69 blog posts and 1,286 tweets.
