Dr. Kimberly Humphrey is a Climate Change and Human Health Fellow at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment and an emergency physician from Australia. Kimberly’s main research focus is the adaptation of health systems to climate change, particularly in relation to emergency medicine. Her current main area of research involves investigating the impacts of extreme weather events on health care, specifically on emergency department and primary care use, with a focus on the impacts of wildfires in Australia and California.
She is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide and is a section editor for the Emergency Medicine Australasia journal. Kimberly is on the national board of Doctors for the Environment Australia, and until recently served as the Deputy Chair of the board as a well as SA State Committee chair. She holds numerous committee roles within the Australasian College For Emergency Medicine (ACEM) including serving on the ACEM Public Health and Disaster Committee since 2013, and is the current Deputy Chair of the Council of Advocacy, Practice and Partnerships, the council leading public health and climate change policy and advocacy for ACEM.
Prior to her fellowship, Kimberly received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide and completed her emergency medicine residency at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. She has a Master in Public Health and Tropical Medicine from James Cook University, and her most recent role has been serving under the Chief Public Health Officer for South Australia as the Public Health Medical Consultant for the Department for Health and Wellbeing. During her fellowship she intends to focus on adaptation approaches to climate disasters by health systems and populations, mitigating emergency department practice of ‘high carbon cost, low value’ clinical care, and the education and preparedness of the medical community to address the impacts of climate change on health.