Maggie L Grabow

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · Department of Family Medicine and Community Health

Rising greenhouse gas levels heat the earth’s surface and alter climate patterns, posing unprecedented threats to planetary ecology and human health. At the same time, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease have reached epidemic proportions across the globe, caused in part by decreases in physical activity and by over-consumption of carbon-i...

Responding effectively to intensifying climate change hazards to protect human health in personal and professional settings is an urgent and pressing challenge. This will require collaboration and subject matter expertise of people across the life course and occupations. In this perspective piece, we build on a previously published compilation of c...

A new generation of activists is calling for bold responses to the climate crisis. Although young people are motivated to act on climate issues, existing educational frameworks do not adequately prepare them by addressing the scope and complexity of the human health risks associated with climate change. We adapted the US government’s climate litera...

Background The majority of commuting trips in the United States are taken by motor vehicle. Yet, lack of regular physical activity has been identified as one of its most significant public health issues, and globally, risks due to physical inactivity are increasing. However, we believe current studies offer an unclear picture of the complex role of...

Pro-environmental behaviors and the cultural shifts that can accompany these may offer solutions to the consequences of a changing climate. Mindfulness has been proposed as a strategy to initiate these types of behaviors. In 2017, we pilot-tested Mindful Climate Action (MCA), an eight-week adult education program that delivers energy use, climate c...

Purpose: Compare 8-weeks of MBSR, AET and no-treatment control during the fall season on objectively-measured physical activity in healthy adults. Methods: Participants (n=66) wore an Actigraph GT3X+ accelerometer for seven days pre-randomization, and following 8-week MBSR or AET interventions, or neither (control). Mean daily minutes (min) of m...

Background: Significant mitigation efforts beyond the Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) coming out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement are required to avoid warming of 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. Health co-benefits represent selected near term, positive consequences of climate policies that can offset mitigation costs in the shor...

Greenhouse gases from human activities are causing climate change, creating risks for people around the globe. Behaviors involving transportation, diet, energy use, and purchasing drive greenhouse gas emissions, but are also related to health and well-being, providing opportunity for co-benefits. Replacing shorter automobile trips with walking or c...

Background: The accelerating accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere is changing global environmental conditions in unprecedented and potentially irreversible ways. Climate change poses a host of challenges to the health of populations through complex direct and indirect mechanisms. The direct effects include an increased freque...

Background: On average in the United States, approximately 3.5 percent of commuting trips are taken by foot or bicycle, 5 percent by public transit, and the remaining 91.5 percent by motor vehicle. Lack of regular physical activity has been identified as one of the most significant public health issues in the United States, and the global significa...

Growing evidence suggests that mixed methods approaches to measuring neighborhood effects on health are needed. The Wisconsin Assessment of the Social and Built Environment (WASABE) is an objective audit tool designed as an addition to a statewide household-based health examination survey, the Survey of the Health of Wisconsin (SHOW), to objectivel...

Background: Automobile exhaust contains fine particulate matter and precursors to ozone, posing health risks. Objective: To quantify health and economic benefits from reducing automobile usage for short urban trips. Methods: Using census tract-level mobile emissions estimates, we remove short automobile round-trips less than 8 kilometers...

Automobile exhaust contains precursors to ozone and fine particulate matter (PM ≤ 2.5 µm in aerodynamic diameter; PM2.5), posing health risks. Dependency on car commuting also reduces physical fitness opportunities. In this study we sought to quantify benefits from reducing automobile usage for short urban and suburban trips. We simulated census-tr...

As the leading causes of morbidity and mortality have shifted from infectious to non-infectious diseases for industrialized countries, chronic diseases, especially those linked to obesity and air quality have risen in priority for health officials within the US, nearly 100 cities exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Ambient Air...

Many health outcomes and diseases are sensitive to climate, including: heat-related mortality or morbidity; air pollution-related illnesses; infectious diseases, particularly those indirectly transmitted via water or by insect or rodent vectors; and refugee health issues linked to forced population migration. Yet, the environmental exposure risks o...