We pediatricians have seen what lead poisoning does to children

Tampa Bay Times

Since the 2000s, 16 children have been diagnosed with elevated blood lead levels as a result of a parent working at the Gopher Resource plant. ...

08 April, 2021

Inequalities In Our Global Health Care Systems: Healing the Divide

Doha Debates

Education. Income. Gender. Ethnicity. Community. All these things can impact our health. Dr. Cheryl L. Holder and Dr. Vikram Patel join us on this episode of #DearWorldLive​ on #WorldHealthDay​ to talk about divisions and inequ...

07 April, 2021

Local government control over pollution protects our health and our children’s future

The Invading Sea

Whether gas is burned in a power plant or piped into our homes to cook our food and warm our homes, most people are not aware that natural gas pollutes. This is a critical problem from both a climate-warming perspective as ...

30 March, 2021

Florida Bill Would Prevent Cities from Banning Natural Gas for New Construction

Bay News 9

As a way to combat climate change, local governments in California and other progressive enclaves over the past two years have passed ordinances banning the use of natural gas as an energy source in new construction – but a bill ...

19 March, 2021

Environmental racism impacts black health outcome

Nubian Tigers Podcast

Our first guest for season two of our podcast is Dr. Cheryl Holder, class of ’80. We talk with Dr. Holder about how environmental racism impacts Black health outcomes. Long term exposure to pollutants and lack of acces...

25 February, 2021

Rewriting The Prescription

New Climate Narratives

And why is nobody recognizing that there are people now that are impacted with this climate. And it's not polar bears. And it's not just the buildings. And by the same time that my patients were coming in, I would hea...

23 February, 2021

Florida needs stronger energy efficiency programs for our health, for our future

Tampa Bay Times

Most states have energy efficiency programs to help homeowners save money on their electric bills. Through these programs, power companies are required to spend a fraction of their sales...

13 February, 2021

In Florida, worsening heat puts more people at risk

Orlando Sentinel

For more than two decades now, Jeannie Economos has been advocating for farmworkers’ health. Pesticide exposure was her first focus. But for half that time, she’s also zeroed in on deadly heat.“It gets hotter every summer,”...

19 January, 2021

Sinking Shores, Rising Rents / Cheryl Holder, Jesse Keenan, Nicole Crooks

American Diagnosis

“As we enter into a time of climate change, one of the things we are realizing is these communities that have been systematically oppressed are now the spaces people with money want to be in because all around us is sinki...

08 December, 2020

Pressured By Students, Medical Schools Grapple With Climate Change

Health Affairs Magazine

On Memorial Day weekend 2020, the skies opened up over Miami, Florida. Sheets of rain skidded off roofs, flooded streets, and overflowed canals, with three inches pouring down in a single hour. The rain continued to ...

01 December, 2020

In this election, our kids’ health and future are at stake

Tampa Bay Times

I’ll never forget the day I learned about climate change. My college professor drew a line across the chalkboard — from one end of the room to the other. He drew two small hash marks, close together, in the middle to mark t...

26 October, 2020

Florida delegation highlights new climate change report touting benefits of Paris pact

Florida Politics

Three Democratic members of Florida’s congressional delegation highlighted a new report on climate change focusing on the benefit to the state should the U.S. abide by the 2015 Paris climate agreement....

20 October, 2020

Earth’s New Gilded Era: The world is getting hotter, and the divide between rich and poor is getting bigger.

The Atlantic Magazine

Consider the cantaloupe. It’s a decent melon. If you, like me, are the sort who constantly mixes them up, cantaloupes are the orange ones, and honeydews are green. If you, like me, are old enough to remember vacations,...

15 October, 2020

Melting wax sculpture placed in Orlando to show impacts of climate crisis

WESH 2 TV

Thursday, local leaders gathered in Orlando with a warning: Florida's already hot and humid weather will get worse if we don't act. Orlando, along with Tampa and Miami, are now home to a wax statue which will melt, to demonstrate ...

24 September, 2020

Florida needs to recognize the growing threat of extreme heat, especially for pregnant women

The Invading Sea

I recently moved back to my native state of Florida, and I love it. I’ve seen some cold, snowy Januarys up North.Yet summer in our tropical paradise feels hotter than the ones I remember as a child. In fact, the last 5 year...

24 September, 2020

How Cities Can Combat the Dangerous Combination of Extreme Heat and COVID

Yes! Magazine

Labor Day Weekend usually signals the end of summer, but this year, it seems like the record heat isn’t ready to release its grip quite yet. Another heat wave is on its way, signaling how our climate is changing. Almost all of...

04 September, 2020

Climate Change: The Other Health Crisis

US News and World Report

The coronavirus pandemic isn’t the only thing challenging the U.S. health care system. EVEN BEFORE COVID-19 put the American health care system to the test, that system was under strain from another invisible enemy:...

26 August, 2020

Point of View: Stop the burn of pre-harvesting sugarcane

Palm Beach Post

“Black snow” is what some residents along Lake Okeechobee’s Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) call the soot and ash that falls on their community during sugarcane burning season. A former 20-year veteran cane cutter, said s...

19 August, 2020

‘It’s hell living there’: Texas inmates say they are battling COVID-19 in prisons with no A/C

The Dallas Morning News

Daisy Busby found out her husband had COVID-19 on a day when the temperature at Fabian Dale Dominguez State Jail topped 96 degrees. Two weeks later, more than 500 inmates there were infected. There is no air conditi...

31 July, 2020

What Happens When a Pandemic Meets a Heat Wave

Bloomberg City Lab

On a sweltering Sunday afternoon in North Miami, Carmen Arocho, 54, has taken her four grandchildren to a nearby supermarket — not to get groceries but to escape the oppressive heat that’s been baking South Florida. ...

24 July, 2020

Florida Moves Ahead With More Electric-Vehicle Plans: Will Investment Pass By Poor, Minority Communities?

WUFT

MIAMI – Florida is moving ahead with plans to dramatically expand its network of electric vehicle charging stations along major interstates and highways. State spending is driving the expansion — even during the pandemic — thanks in ...

20 July, 2020

For Poor In America, Sanitary Sewage Disposal Can Be A Challenge

WUFT

Two new environmental laws in Florida signed this week include efforts to improve septic systems and increased fines for sewer overflows and other related violations. But for low-income communities across the country, sanitary sewage d...

02 July, 2020

Paradise for Mold: A lesser-known consequence of a warmer, wetter climate, mold is also a trigger for Florida’s most-common chronic childhood illness—asthma

WUFT

Twenty-four to 48 hours. After a storm, that’s all it takes for mold to compromise a home or the health of the family living inside. From under the kitchen sink to ceiling tiles and insulation systems, mold begins in the most-hidden of...

01 June, 2020

Reopening our communities safely amid pandemic

Miami Times

On April 16, 2020 the president’s administration outlined a three-phase approach to reopening the nation as the spread of coronavirus slows. This plan includes a 14-day sustained decrease in cases and pre-crisis hospital conditi...

29 April, 2020

Trees are good for our health. Miami needs a lot more of them

Miami Herald

One afternoon, a middle-aged woman visited our clinic, hoping to improve her blood sugar. The woman — I’ll call her Flor — wasn’t yet diabetic, but her sugars were higher than normal, and the scale showed she was overweight. ...

23 April, 2020

Immediate Actions Needed to Protect Black Floridians from COVID-19

The Florida Courrier

COVID-19 has demonstrated disproportionate effects on African Americans due to high incidence of chronic health conditions. Especially diabetes, heart disease, severe obesity and asthma which has been observed to result...

17 April, 2020

Are humans to blame for the coronavirus? How deforestation gives rise to pandemics

NBC

Are humans to blame for the rise in infectious disease we're experiencing worldwide? In this episode of Think Again, NBC News correspondent Andrew Stern investigates the link between deforestation, habitat change and pandemics. From Zik...

09 April, 2020

Many residents in African-American communities are more vulnerable to the coronavirus than the general population

Miami Herald

As a physician, I have an income and access to care. I am privy to information the average person is not. So when I received an email a few weeks ago informing me that I had been unknowingly exposed to COVID-19 during my TEDMED...

06 April, 2020

The doctors of tomorrow are concerned about the environmental policies of today

The Invading Sea

When you think about the doctors and nurses you see in your daily life — what we call clinical care — you may be surprised to learn that such care addresses only 15% of your health care needs. The remaining 85% is determine...

02 March, 2020

Not to Ruin the Super Bowl, but the Sea Is Consuming Miami

Wired Magazine

AH, THE SUPER Bowl, a bonanza of overeating and watching men brutalize each other ( brain health be damned), punctuated by 30-second reminders to spend money. This weekend the spectacle will play out at Hard Rock Stadium, a l...

31 January, 2020

NBC6 Climate Check Special 2019

NBC6

As part of the NBC6 Climate Check series of stories regarding our changing climate and environmental issues, we showcase in-depth reporting on the rising threat of killer heat, food sustainability and the meat footprint, coral diseas...

25 December, 2019

The rising health threats of a hot planet

AAMC

Cheryl Holder, MD, first began to connect the dots a few years ago, when her patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma began needing to use their prescription inhalers more often. An internist and associate ...

08 October, 2019

Public Service Commission should set ambitious energy saving goals for power companies

The Invading Sea

As physicians on the front line of public health, we know that energy efficiency reduces pollution, improves human health, and lowers energy costs. That’s why we are deeply concerned that Florida’s power companies’ record o...

09 August, 2019

The climate crisis harms our health as well as the environment and must be the primary focus of the 2020 presidential race

The Invading Sea

Florida faces a clear and present danger from the climate crisis. Unfortunately, despite widespread calls in Florida’s media prior to the June Democratic presidential debates, only 15 minutes out of a total of 4 hours was s...

17 July, 2019

CLIMATE CHANGE: Florida should prepare for months of 105 heat index temps

Palm Beach Post

Climate change: Study says if we don’t make changes, the heat will be ‘above and beyond what Floridians are used to today.’ A pint-size heat wave last month smothered South Florida with temperatures that felt like 108 degree...

16 July, 2019

Extreme Heat in Miami Will Only Get Worse, Scientists Warn

Miami New Times

Dr. Cheryl Holder was volunteering at the Overtown Music & Arts Festival this past weekend when an 11-year-old girl became extremely ill. The temperature was in the low 90s, but the heat index level — a combination of heat a...

16 July, 2019

Words aren’t enough, Activists want more specific plans to combat climate change

Florida Phoenix

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris referred to climate change as the “climate crisis” and “an existential threat to us as a species” when the subject came up during the second Democratic presidential debate in Miami. South Bend, Ind...

28 June, 2019

It’s mostly about climate change as protests dwindle on day two of debates

Miami Herald

In the hours before the second half of the Democratic presidential debates, the streets surrounding the Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts were not as rowdy as they were a day earlier.Compared to Wednesday’s groups of pr...

27 June, 2019

Climate change disproportionately affects low-income populations

Fox 4

Ann Jackson was born with sinus problems. But in the last few years, her leaky nostrils have grown unbearable. “The pollen has been high this last year — last summer and this summer it’s been high... and there’s no way around it becau...

16 May, 2019

Florida doctors warn of effects on health from climate change

WPTV

The topic of climate change is coming up in the offices of doctors in South Florida, as a group of physicians says it is already seeing the effects of climate change on people's health. “I try to impress on people, yes, you have these ...

04 April, 2019

How Climate Change Is Affecting Residents’ Health In Miami

NPR

On a rainy day this past week, we went to visit a man named Jorge in a working-class neighborhood of Miami wedged between a highway and industrial warehouses. We walk up to the front door of a dilapidated, peach-colored duplex....

24 March, 2019

Medical community must sound alarm about climate change’s negative effects on health

Miami Herald

Hearing that 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record reminded me of a family I visited a few years earlier. I was with the medical and nursing students of FIU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine NeighborhoodHELP, which pr...

20 February, 2019

Temperatures In Florida Are Rising. For Vulnerable Patients, The Heat Can Be Life-Threatening

Miami Herald

On a hot day in September, Charlene Jones celebrated her 61st birthday by herself. The former nursing-home cook made herself a birthday dinner of turkey and dressing, macaroni and cheese, string beans and butter pound cake. She...

13 November, 2018

Why your doctor might soon talk to you about climate change

WTSP

When you hear climate change you might think melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and very hot days, but do you ever think it’s currently making you sick? Ken Conklin does. “There are coughing fits that make me go into seizures,” Conk...

09 March, 2018

If you live in Florida, doctors say climate change is already affecting your health

Miami Herald

When most people think about climate change — if they do at all — what usually comes to mind is melting glaciers, starving polar bears and flood waters lapping at the doors of Miami Beach condo buildings. The popular thought is...

09 February, 2018