Program and grad year: MSc'15, PhD'20
Career: Assistant Professor, Health Outcomes, UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Division of Respiratory Medicine, Department of Medicine
Researching respiratory health in a changing climate
For Dr. Kate Johnson (PhD’20), respiratory health is increasingly inseparable from the environment around us.
An assistant professor in UBC’s Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Johnson studies asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) through the lens of health economics. Her research examines not only how to improve health outcomes, but how health policies and healthcare resources can be used more effectively. More recently, that work has expanded into an area of growing urgency: the impact of climate change and air pollution on lung health.
Johnson and her collaborators are studying how increasing wildfire smoke may affect the burden of respiratory disease in Canada, as well as the types of policies that could reduce those health effects. That includes practical interventions such as programs that help make air cleaners more affordable and accessible.
The issue is particularly complex because the relationship between climate change and healthcare runs in both directions.
“Not only are lung diseases very susceptible to air pollution and climate change, but also the healthcare use due to increasing lung disease is also driving climate change and greenhouse gas emissions,” Johnson explains.
Her research is therefore looking at both the environmental factors contributing to respiratory illness and the environmental impact of the healthcare required to treat it. It is an area Johnson describes as both difficult and motivating.
“One thing that makes me hopeful is the growing interest and the growing awareness of the health impacts of climate change,” she says. “I really enjoy being part of a field of research that feels topical and relevant and urgent.”
That urgency also creates an opportunity to influence policy. Johnson’s work focuses in part on prevention and earlier intervention in asthma and COPD, asking how healthcare systems can respond before disease becomes more severe and resource-intensive.
Her joint appointment with UBC Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Division of Respiratory Medicine allows her to approach these questions from multiple perspectives. Through collaborations with clinician scientists, she brings together firsthand knowledge of patient care with the health economics and research expertise found within Pharm Sci.
For Johnson, that combination is one of the strengths of the work: research questions are grounded in what patients and clinicians are experiencing, while also looking at the broader systems and policies that shape care.
Returning to Pharm Sci
Johnson’s connection to UBC Pharmaceutical Sciences began as a PhD student with the Collaboration for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), the same research group she is now part of as a faculty member. After completing her PhD in 2020, she pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington. Although she considered opportunities in industry, she continued to feel drawn to academic research and ultimately returned to UBC.
“I felt very inspired and motivated by the thought of coming back to the faculty that I had done my PhD in and felt like home to me,” she says.
Today, Johnson’s work brings together several of the most pressing questions facing healthcare: how climate change is reshaping disease, how healthcare itself affects the environment, and how research can inform policies that improve both patient outcomes and the way resources are used.
For a researcher whose career began at Pharm Sci, returning to the Faculty has also created an opportunity to push that work into new territory.