In spring 2025, Duke faculty member Mark Janko offered a new undergraduate course, Climate Change and Global Health, to explore how environmental shifts impact human health. The new course blended fieldwork, data analysis and interdisciplinary learning. In one hands-on activity, students measured tree trunks to calculate carbon storage, connecting everyday actions to carbon footprints. Janko, a geographer and biostatistician, drew from over a decade of research in the Amazon, Madagascar and the Congo Basin, where deforestation has altered ecosystems and increased disease risks. His course emphasizes how climate change affects health through rising temperatures, shifting disease patterns and ecosystem disruption. Janko designed the course in response to Duke’s Climate Commitment and the Duke Global Health Institute’s strategic focus on climate-related health issues. READ MORE.