As climate change drives more frequent and intense extreme heat events, certain prescription drugs that impair thermoregulation, such as ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, anticholinergics, and psychotropic medications, may increase the risk of Heat-Related Illness and Death (HRID), particularly among older adults. This risk is heightened by a growing elderly population increasingly managing chronic conditions with complex medication regimens. Therefore, this study investigates how pharmacologically mediated heat vulnerability is distributed across the US and develops a multilevel risk index to visualize this emerging public health concern. Using Medicare Part D data, we analyze county-level prescription patterns in relation to heat-related hospitalization data, identifying where older populations face the highest compound risk from both environmental exposure and medication-induced thermal vulnerability. We develop a “medication heat risk score” that quantifies local prescribing trends of heat-sensitive drugs. We integrate this with social vulnerability indicators and climatic data to construct a nationwide medication heat index map. Our findings aim to guide the development of climate-sensitive prescribing practices, including reconsidering dosage or drug alternatives during periods of high heat. Ultimately, we argue that improving geographic awareness of drug-related heat vulnerability can help protect elderly populations and inform public health interventions attuned to medical and climatic risks.

Poetry has become a hallmark for personal expression. Originating in the American Cold War era, the subgenre of Confessional Poetry emerged to reflect the socially taboo complexities of mental health struggles and personal feelings, with poems written by women specifically critiquing gender roles under the patriarchy. In the early 2010s, poetry with short, simple language describing reactions to both trauma and the female experience in a modern world emerged on the platform Instagram. Coined “Instapoetry”, it reflects many of the same themes and taboo topics made public in works of Confessional Poetry. Through examination of works by the figureheads of the subgenres—Sylvia Plath and Rupi Kaur, respectively—this comparative analysis explores the portrayal and utilization of vulnerability in these poems. The analysis of the relationship between women’s work in these two genres of poetry further aims to highlight how evolving societal expectations influence women’s use of style, form, and content. Through text analysis and reliance on sociolinguistic theories on how language reflects and reinforces gendered societal biases, this research investigates how and why women gravitate towards poetry as a means of self expression, as well as how this has evolved in response to changes in social norms.

This project investigates how the ongoing climate crisis, particularly escalating global temperatures and frequent extreme heat events, increases risk for an already vulnerable population. Thermoregulatory dysfunction, an often invisible condition that impairs the body’s ability to regulate temperature, significantly limits affected individuals’ mobility in outdoor environments and capacity to carry out daily life activities. As a result, many are confined to indoor spaces, and must navigate a built environment that is not designed with their needs in mind. To inform public and medical discourse on this growing concern, this project centers the lived experiences of affected individuals. Semi-structured online interviews were conducted with participants recruited from Reddit. Complementary research was also conducted to explore related topics such as: the level of support for affected individuals in other countries, the role of the built environment in shaping access or exclusion, how heat intersects with disability and becomes disabling, and broader questions around how we define disability in the context of climate change. This work highlights thermoregulatory dysfunction as one of the many underrecognized health conditions worsened by global heating. It also contributes to larger interdisciplinary and policy conversations around the need for recognizing thermal inequality and addressing the disparate impacts of climate change.