HEAT-MIND investigates how perinatal heat exposure drives maternal depression and anxiety — a burden that is severe yet understudied in Ghana, where perinatal depression estimates run as high as 50% and access to cooling is largely confined to wealthy urban households. 

Funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by Dr. Kenneth Ae-Ngibise at the Kintampo Health Research Centre, the five-year project is coordinated through the West Africa Centre for Climate and Health Innovation and Resilience (WACCHIR). It combines three approaches: mediation analysis of existing GRAPHS cohort data to interrogate biological and psychosocial pathways; a new prospective pregnancy cohort to test those mechanisms directly; and the co-design and piloting of an SMS/voice-based heat early warning system for at-risk women and community health workers. 

My contribution centers on the cohort's exposure assessment strategy and on the digital warning-system intervention, which builds on prior work deploying scalable mobile platforms in Ghana. 

The project is a collaboration between KHRC, Columbia University, Mount Sinai, and Montana State University.