Kathryn Conlon, PhD is an Assistant Professor at UC Davis—jointly appointed in the Department of Public Health Sciences (School of Medicine) and the Department of Medicine & Epidemiology (School of Veterinary Medicine)—and serves as Co‑Director of the Climate Adaptation Research Center.
Her work focuses on how climate change affects human, animal, and environmental health by developing environmental epidemiological studies that integrate spatio‑temporal exposure assessments, weather, climate, and land‑use models, alongside mixed-methods in social and behavioral epidemiology.
She collaborates closely with state and local health practitioners to design, implement, and evaluate evidence-based adaptation interventions—such as wildfire smoke protections for outdoor workers and heat vulnerability mapping—for at-risk communities.
A former epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and contributor to national climate-health assessments, Dr. Conlon has authored numerous studies on extreme heat, wildfire smoke, pollen dynamics, and preterm birth risk tied to climate variability.
Below are audio excerpts from Conlon's interview with CapRadio's Politics Editor Chris Nichols.
What is the WHAT-NOW-CA Survey?
Transcript
Chris Nichols
A new study from UC Davis looked at responses from victims of Northern California wildfires in 2017 including the Tubbs fire, and it identified what survivors said they need to recover, both in the immediate aftermath and over time. Kathryn Conlon is an associate professor at the UC Davis Department of Public Health Services [sic] and the lead author of this new study. She joins us now. Welcome, Kathryn.
Before we get into the findings of your new report, how and why did you decide to start looking into this connection between public health and wildfires.
Dr. Conlon
Well, wildfires have become a very important part of the landscape of living in the West, as we've seen in more recent years, and the impacts, the health impacts, specifically, are starting to be more understood, but there's still a lot to explore.
Chris Nichols
So why do you think needs assessments like this aren't conducted for more fires, especially given how damaging they can be?
Dr. Conlon
So needs assessments are really important tools, especially from the public health perspective. They can be done in a rapid sense. So, they can be done within hours or days and weeks of an event, an event like a tornado, a hurricane, and in this case, a wildfire. And traditionally, these needs assessments have focused on tornadoes, flooding, hurricanes, and not as much in wildfires. In part because we have more tornadoes, hurricanes, but we've seen, as we, as we were just discussing, a lot more wildfires happening. And so, the needs assessment tool is one that is really valuable, and is, I think, an important research opportunity to help us understand what communities need in the midst of a wildfire and in the recovery process.
Chris Nichols
Professor Conlon, tell us where the information for your report came from and a little bit about the people who were surveyed.
Dr. Conlon
Yeah, so this project stems from a survey that was done in what we call the WHAT-NOW cohort.
So, as we heard, in October 2017 there were a lot of fires that broke out. The conditions were really hot. They were very dry and windy, and the Tubbs Fire, which was mentioned in addition to the Atlas Fire and the Nuns Fire, and several others swept through parts of Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, and surrounding counties. And during that time, over 90,000 people were evacuated. More than 8,800 structures were destroyed, and we saw 44 people die. And at the time, in 2017, this was the most devastating fire in California's history.
And so, when this occurred, a very responsive UC Davis team of researchers, led by Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, received funding to assess both the long- and short-term health effects of the fires and collect information that could be useful for local, regional, state, and federal agencies, in the service of helping prepare and respond for future fires.
What Can We Learn From Wildfire Survivors?
Transcript
Chris Nichols
So, let's talk a little bit more about the findings. The report classified the needs wildfire victims say are most pressing. Can you walk us through some of those different categories?
Dr. Conlon
Yeah, so in response to the surveys, we had two open ended questions. And open ended is important because it allowed respondents to just write in their answers, and we asked them about what their households needs were. And there are two questions. So, the first question was, what was your household's greatest need one week after the fire? And the second question was, what is your household's greatest need currently, and by currently, that was, on average, about six months after the fire.
So, we had three essential time points that we could assess here. So immediately after the fire, about six months after the fire, and those, those that were what we call persistent, so they occurred both immediately after the fire and at the time of our survey.
And so, after doing some thematic coding, we identified four major themes, and those included physical needs, and those could be described as being basic needs, shelter, water, food, utilities and housing; air needs, which included improved air quality, access to masks, access to filters; health needs; and information needs.
And our most frequently reported needs were those that were physical, and those were we saw respondents identify physical needs, most predominantly at the immediately after the fire and then at the time of survey.
Chris: One more question about the findings for the people who were surveyed, did they feel like their needs were being met after these disasters?
Dr. Conlon: They did state that at, at the later time point that they wanted more information on what environmental health impacts would be affecting their health in the long term. They had, at the longer time point, needs related to financing and to housing that were not being met.
So, we do see a bit of a shift in the priority of what needs were, needing attendance at the beginning of the fires and those that needed more attention at the end.
What's the Wildland-Urban Interface?
Transcript
Chris Nichols
Let's talk a little bit about the environments where people who were surveyed were living these wildland urban interfaces. What should we know about these areas?
Dr. Conlon
The wildland urban interface, also referred to as the “WUI,” is an is a zone essentially where human development is, so we see homes, buildings, other types of infrastructure, meet with undeveloped wildland vegetation. The WUI is considered the fastest growing land use type in the United States, so it is something that we have to really think about when we're considering our risk to wildfires, and what would potentially be an opportunity for the fire to occur in an urban area.
And when we see WUI fires, we do see burning of that biomass, that natural vegetation, but we also see burning of all of the things that are in our in our homes, are in our buildings. So those include sofas that might have flame retardants, that might have other chemicals that we still don't fully understand their health impacts.
How Do Wildfires Affect Mental Health?
Transcript
Chris Nichols
What are some of the impacts of wildfires on mental health.
Dr. Conlon
Mental health needs were reported were most reported at every single time point amongst the health amongst those health needs, but the most frequently they were reported were immediately, in about six months after and these mental health conditions that we really identified were general mental health statements so people would respond and say that they needed to feel some peace of mind. We also saw responses that focused on anxiety, the term trauma was used, in some indications of depression.
Trauma was reported nearly three times as many households at the time of the survey compared to immediately after the fire, which suggests that there was this time frame during which people reflected back and identified trauma related responses after the immediacy of the fire.
Chris Nichols
In your study, you talk about the importance of services like psychological first aid. What exactly is that?
Dr. Conlon
Psychological first aid is an evidenced, informed intervention that is designed to help individuals cope with immediate psychological effects related to disasters and traumatic events. The goal of psychological first aid is to reduce the initial distress of the event and provide some short- and long-term adaptive functioning in those individuals who've been experiencing the event. And what is most important about the psychological first aid intervention is that it's delivered very quickly, that it's delivered within hours or days following some type of crisis, that it is culturally sensitive and it's adaptable.
We've had great conversations with collaborators at county health. Departments with Cal Fire talking about how we might be able to utilize certain interventions like the psychological first aid in our preparedness and response plans. There's a lot of interest in in developing out some of those specific interventions to accommodate community. So, we feel really confident that this type of needs assessment can really be translated into actionable changes at a county at a state level. So, we feel really excited about those opportunities. We're just hoping that we can continue.
