International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8th, kicked off OAR’s 2023 Women’s History Month Campaign. Supported by CPO’s CEE Division, this month’s series of profiles will celebrate accomplished women at NOAA working under the umbrella of climate resilience—their expertise ranging from science to adaptation planning to communication and education, and everything in between.

Morgan Zabow entered her undergraduate experience wanting to be a doctor. It wasn’t until she began to take classes outside of her intended field that she realized she wanted to practice health on a community scale. Morgan began working in community health spaces during a community mental health internship in rural Alabama. She then received her master's in Public Health from Emory University and fell in love with the climate and health field.

In July 2021, Morgan began working at NOAA as part of the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) and NOAA’s One Health Initiative teams. In this role, Morgan works with communities across the U.S. to map heat in their neighborhoods as part of an urban heat island mapping program. After the process of using citizen science to map heat patterns and data has been completed, she helps these communities to create equitable cooling solutions. Morgan also was part of the team that created Heat.gov and is deeply involved in using social media and other communication tools to stress the importance of heat and health.

In this interview, Morgan discusses working with communities to map heat and provide equitable cooling solutions, her female role models, and her future as well as the future of women in the heat and health field.

Read the interview »

For more information contact Gillen Curren.

Image credit: Morgan Zabow