Dr Liz Hanna

Dr Hanna’s research expertise broadly canvasses climate change and human health. This covers exposure-related risks and health impacts arising from acute or slow onset of climate disasters (heat, floods, fires, droughts, storms etc), as well as adaptation, harm prevention and minimisation actions taken by the individual, communities and via government policy, and education needs for the health workforce as well as community health education, to allow people to prepare and protect themselves and their families.

With her clinical health background, she translates climate risks directly into how this effects our bodies, and the psychology of self-protective decision making.

At ANU, Dr Hanna directed research programs directly investigating heat exposure at home and at work, and convened Australia’s National Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Human Health. Her services have been sought for national and international projects assessing vulnerability to climate change and devising climate protective policies.

Dr Hanna was President of the Climate and Health Alliance, and she currently chairs the Environmental Health Working Group for the World Federation of Public Health Associations. Her current global projects include an assessment of national polices to protect people’s health from climate change, health based climate litigation, and climate forced migration. Through this WFPHA role, she advises the World Health Organization and other international agencies on climate change and health and the path forward.