Research
Project title: An innovative public health approach to overlapping societal challenges: reinforcing communities’ adaptive capacity to the adverse impacts of heatwaves on serious illness and end-of-life care
Project acronym: CLIMADAPT
Postdoctoral researcher: Jessica Neicun
Supervisor: Lara Pivodic | Co-supervisor: Bieke Abelshausen
Projections for Brussels suggest that heatwaves will become more frequent and intense in the future. This will cause sudden deterioration of chronic illnesses along with a rise in heat-related deaths, particularly among the elderly. Burden on informal and formal carers – mainly women – will thus significantly increase in the coming decades. Adverse impacts of heatwaves will be more noticeable in deprived neighbourhoods hosting older people living in highly exposed built environments. Showing the highest rate poverty in Belgium, Brussels is home to a considerable population that carries this double risk.
The aim of CLIMADAPT research project is to understand drivers of vulnerability and factors enhancing adaptive capacity to the adverse impacts of heatwaves on serious illness and end-of-life care among most vulnerable communities in Brussels. Using an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach that combines public health, epidemiology as well as health, educational and climate sciences, the research will identify up to three highly exposed neighbourhoods concentrating communities at risk of suffering from the adverse impacts of heatwaves. Subsequently, factors influencing individual and collective adaptive capacity to heatwaves will be explored through a participatory qualitative study.
CLIMADAPT is expected to timely develop a new understanding of adaptive capacity to heatwaves from an innovative interdisciplinary perspective focused on strengthening community-based responses to contemporary societal challenges. It therefore addresses the overlap between Climate & Energy and Health & Well-being, two of the Brussels-Capital Region’s six societal challenges. Ultimately, its outputs will inform social transition in Brussels while fostering city’s resilience to climate change.
Biography
Jessica Neicun is a health and medical sociologist working on the political, socio-economic and cultural factors influencing health, illness and healthcare trajectories. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology (University of Chile, 2003) and two master’s degrees: Development studies (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2006) and Migration (University of Paris 7 Denis-Diderot, 2007). As a graduate, she held several positions in Chile and France, working as a policy and research officer in social policy for both the public sector and not-for-profit organisations. In 2023 she earned a PhD in International Health from Maastricht University (The Netherlands). Between 2022 and 2025, she worked at the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal Research Centre (CRCHUM), where she led a collaborative postdoctoral research project aimed at improving access to healthcare for homeless Indigenous peoples in Montreal, Canada. In February 2025 she joined the University of Montreal School of Public Health, where she begun studying interdisciplinary approaches to the impacts of climate change on health. She is a member of the Advisory Team for the Mental Health | Policy | Economics Group from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). She also collaborates with the Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research (Faculty of Social Sciences, McMaster University, Canada) and with the Centro de Estudios en Interculturalidad Crítica en Salud, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de La Frontera (Chile).