Bass Connections Team Takes on the Heat

The team is examining links between extreme heat exposure and kidney disease in farmers in Sri Lanka

People talking in a field
The team is seeking to understand the experiences of people in Sri Lanka communities.

A Bass Connections team is working to understand how rising temperatures are shaping health and livelihoods in climate-vulnerable communities in Sri Lanka. 

The project is focused on examining links between extreme heat exposure and Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology (CKDu), which is a growing concern among agricultural workers. 

For the past three decades, there has been a growing population of young farmers in Sri Lanka diagnosed with CKDu. This is alarming as kidney diseases are typically associated with other metabolic diseases such as diabetes or hypertension, which are not observed among CKDu patients.

Ongoing studies show that environmental change, particularly increasing temperatures, is associated with CKDu. Previous studies have attributed CKDu to agrochemical exposure, water stress and heat exposure — all climate related stressors. 

Because of this, CKDu-affected communities in Sri Lanka serve as sentinel communities of climate change.

During the past year, the “Closing Heat Data Gaps and Exploring Climate Injustice Narratives” team shifted its focus from collecting heat data to examining the lived experiences of people in these regions. Students collaborated with partners at the University of Ruhana to design community-based research tools, including multilingual interview guides to be used in upcoming fieldwork. 

“We have a lot of scientific data to help us unravel the mystery of disease pathology,” said team co-leader Aunchalee Loscalzo Palmquist, associate professor at the Duke Global Health Institute, “but it’s important to understand the human experiences behind these data, told from the people living in these communities, in their own words.”

This summer, the team will be conducting fieldwork in four locations in Sri Lanka: Matara, Padaviya, Jaffna and Colombo. These regions were chosen because they have different climates, so the people living in them experience different amounts of heat and rates of CKDu. Ultimately through conversations and gatherings, the team hopes to inform policies to better support those on the frontlines of extreme heat.

The “Closing Heat Data Gaps and Exploring Climate Injustice Narratives” team won the poster competition at this year’s Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase.